by: Dina Y. Sulaeman (Padjadjaran University)
Imagine a country from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River. In it, Muslims, Jews, and Christians coexist with equal rights. There are no more walls, checkpoints, and second-class citizen status. To many, this sounds impossible. However, for a growing number of intellectuals, activists, and even politicians, this is the only way out of the impasse of the idea of a two-state solution.
In her book One-State: The Only Democratic Future for Palestine-Israel, Ghada Karmi (2023) explains that the United Nations through UNSCOP (1947) once proposed a Jewish-Arab federation model with Jerusalem as the joint capital. This one-state solution discourse has been reborn since the late 1990s. Karmi mentioned names such as Haim Hanegbi, Meron Benvenisti, Azmi Bishara, and Edward Said opened the discourse, followed by Lama Abu-Odeh, Mathias Mossberg, Jeff Halper, Ilan Pappe, Ali Abunimah, and many others. They provide a number of alternatives regarding the one-country solution architecture.
Lama Abu-Odeh proposed a binational or federal model, which is the federation of two administrative units—Jewish and Arab—linked by a central government in the United States system. Within this framework, citizens are free to move and live in any unit, while funds from wealthier units (Jews) are channeled to poorer units (Arabs) to reduce inequality while serving as a reparation mechanism.
Swedish diplomat Mathias Mossberg designed a “overlapping dual state” that accommodates dual nationalities that occur throughout the region. The predominantly Jewish territories are administered by “Israel” and the Arab-Palestinian territories are administered by “Palestinian”, but everyone can choose to live cross-border while retaining their citizenship. A common system—currency, taxation, labor, defense, and public services—is also regulated, by analogy to the modernized Swiss canton.
In his essay Towards a one-state solution in Palestine/ Israel: Lessons from South Africa, a chapter in a book titled Pretending Democracy, Ali Abunimah explained that the scenario of changing the apartheid regime in South Africa could occur relatively peacefully, even though initially the white majority—both the people and the elite—maintained the regime because they were overwhelmed by fear of losing power, economic status, and even physical safety. But the combined pressure of domestic resistance (urban protests, strikes, the ANC movement) and international pressure (boycotts, divestments, sanctions) prompted fundamental changes. In 1994 the apartheid system ended through peaceful negotiations and a democratic state was born with the principle of one person one vote, in accordance with the vision of the 1955 Freedom Charter.
Israeli historian Ilan Pappé in On Palestine, alongside Noam Chomsky, offers a more fundamental perspective. For him, the first step was a paradigm shift: recognizing Israel as a colonial project. If the problem is colonization, of course the only way out is decolonization. Without acknowledging the history of Israel’s formation, which was preceded by the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians in 1947-48 and colonization, what emerges is an Oslo-style illusion of “parity”, which equalizes the positions of Israel and Palestine. In fact, colonizers and colonized parties are clearly not equal entities. The result of the agreement that was drafted on the wrong paradigm is not peace, but capitulation.
Pappe emphasized that while past crimes cannot be fully restored, ongoing crimes must be stopped—and that means requiring regime change in Israel. The Zionist regime with its colonial and apartheid paradigm needs to be replaced with a new regime that is willing to think democratically and fairly. According to him, regime change is not a fantasy: it can happen peacefully, gradually, like the revolutions in Tunis and Egypt.
The similar perspective is voiced by Jeff Halper. In his book he specifically wrote a chapter titled “Addressing the Fears and Concerns of a Single Democratic State.” His vision is decolonization, which is to dismantle the structures of colonial, occupational, and apartheid domination, and replace it with an inclusive democratic state, protecting the equal rights of all citizens as well as national, ethnic, religious, and cultural identities. In realizing this idea, a concrete political program is needed related to the form of the state, the role of religion, the protection of minorities, refugee status/Right of Return, economic-security, immigration, and military-police control.
According to Halper, in fact, the reality on Palestinian soil is a state where Israel controls everything on the basis of apartheid and colonialism. The solution of one democratic is to transform this reality into a citizen democracy. The claim that “Jewish-Arabs cannot coexist” is ahistorical because Palestine’s long history before the existence of the state of Israel records that citizens of the three religions coexisted peacefully. Even today, 21% of Israelis are Arab-Palestinian.
Halper argues that an exclusive “Jewish State” is not in line with modern democracy and therefore Jews need to change their vision. The guarantee for Jews-Israel comes through a constitution that protects the rights of individuals, substantive equality, and participation in human rights conventions. In contrast, for Arab-Palestinians, they will be granted restorative justice: refugee repatriation, restitution/compensation, resource redistribution, investment and affirmation.
At the global political level, still few state leaders have voiced the idea of one democratic country in Palestine land, including the Presidents of Iran, Hashemi Rafsanjani, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Ibrahim Raesi. Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi in 2009 also proposed the idea of a state, even giving it the name “Isratine.” In academia, there have been many academic conferences and the establishment of think tanks to disseminate the idea of one state, including the conferences in London and Madrid in 2007 that resulted in the One State Declaration, the Call for One Democratic State Campaign (ODSC) campaign in 2020, and most recently, in July 2025, the British politician and activist George Galloway, together with David Miller, and Chris Williamson started the One State Palestine campaign.
Antonio Guterres in an interview with CNN in 2018, said, “I’m a strong believer that a one-state solution, of course, is theoretically possible if it is the democratic solution, but I don’t think Israel can accept it.” This statement represents the question on the minds of many, what scenario could make Israel willing to accept the idea of a one-state? The answer was given many times by Ilan Pappe on various occasions. He said that various indicators show that the Zionist regime is in the last phase of its age. The indicators he meant were “the fracturing of Israeli Jewish society, Israel’s economic crisis; Israel’s growing international isolation; the sea-change among young Jews around the world; the weakness of the Israeli army; and the renewal of energy among the younger generation of Palestinians.”
As concluded by Karmi, in essence, the solution of one country is to overcome the root of the problem: the sustainability of Israel as a Zionist state. If Zionism’s practice of the Arabs has resulted in the deprivation of Palestinian land, the denial of their rights, and prolonged conflicts with neighboring countries, then it is illogical for a peace treaty to allow that order to persist. Thus, it may be affirmed that the idea of one state is not a utopia, but one that holds hope and the most rational vision to overcome the historical impasse. This is an idea that may still be difficult to accept, but it challenges us to continue to discuss it rationally in order to transform injustice into a new order that is more just and sustainable.
