About

 Who we are and what we do

 Our primary aim is to raise awareness of one democratic state as the only possible just solution to what is termed the "conflict" between Palestine and Israel. Our founding document is The Munich Declaration, a document of one page in length adopted at an ODS conference in Munich on 2 July 2012 and whose main author was Samir Abed Rabbo. That document remains unchanged, but as an alternative to its first paragraph we have adopted this wording: "One Democratic State (ODS) shall be established in the entire country of historic Palestine between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River as one country that belongs to all its citizens. Citizenship shall be automatic for all who were born in Palestine and all Palestinians who were expelled over the past century and their descendants. A law shall facilitate citizenship in the new democratic, non-identitarian state for long-term residents of Palestine who wish to obtain it. At no point shall religion or ethnicity be criteria for acquiring citizenship."

 

The idea of a single democratic state in historic Palestine is not a new one.

Before and after the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948, in fact from 1918 until 1988, this was the official goal of all Palestinian independence and liberation movements.

In the early 1990s, the Oslo Accords offered the prospect of an independent Palestinian state on the territory occupied by Israel since 1967 and the PLO relinquished its traditional goal of one democratic state.

 

Partly due to the inherent virtues of ODS and partly due to the failure of the accords to deliver an independent Palestine, ODS campaigns have re-emerged.

 

In the final years of the 20th century and the early years of this century writers such as the late Edward Said, Tony Judt and Ghada Karmi (one of our members) highlighted:

• the non-viability of the proposed Palestinian state, given the colonisation and resulting fragmentation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

• that Israel/Palestine could become a normal country based on universal human rights; the ending of Zionism would render the Jewish state superfluous.

Between 2007 and 2014, thirteen conferences on ODS were held in Haifa, Ramallah, Europe, and the USA.
The Munich Conference, in July 2012, unanimously adopted the Munich Declaration.

Other ODS campaign groups
Although there were earlier calls, some online, for ODS - for instance a Swiss-based group in 2003, the London/Madrid group around 2007, one initiated by Haim Bresheeth around 2008, and the Right of Return Groups in Haifa in 2008 and 2010 - the first formal ODS Group, The Movement for One Democratic State in Palestine, was founded by Samir Abed Rabbo in Dallas, Texas, in 2010. 
The Popular Movement for One Democratic State on the Land of Historic Palestine was established in 2013, lead organiser being Radi Jarai.
The One State Foundation was launched in 2018.
The One Democratic State Campaign, which is supported by ICAHD (led by Jeff Halper), was also founded in 2018.

The newest and probably strongest group, the One Democratic State Initiative, an Association registered in France, came into being in 2021.

 

Many of our members are also signatories to, or supporters/members of, one or more of these other groups.