Israel, through launching a war on Gaza that killed tens of thousands and destroyed buildings and infrastructure in the strip, has forcefully created a one-state reality, an expert said.
“The two-state solution is dead. The Israelis killed the two-state solution by continuing to build and colonize the West Bank, destroying any possibility for an independent and sovereign Palestinian state. So, the Israelis have created a one-state reality,” Andrew March, an expert on Islamic political thought and modern political theory, told Daily Sabah.
“The only question is whether that one-state reality will be humane, whether it will not involve the further expulsion and dispossession of Palestinians and whether it can be just and democratic,” March underlined.
He said that the "ideal option" right now is “a one-state solution where Palestinian refugees can return home and in which there is democratic citizenship – equal citizenship and equal rights – for everybody within the state.”
Israel has systematically targeted civilian facilities, including schools, hospitals and places of worship, in its offensive on Gaza, repeatedly claiming, often without evidence, that they were striking targets belonging to the Palestinian group Hamas.
Israel's war on Gaza has led to the deaths of more than 45,100 people following a cross-border attack on Israel by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023.
The U.N. estimates that 70% of the dead in Gaza have been women and children.
“The Zionist movement has been secular in religious components, both of which converge around a desire for as much land as possible, and in some cases, specific territories and specific lands are specifically designated as having a religious experience. They are mentioned in the Bible, where they were thought to be part of some ancient Jewish kingdom, etc. But non-religious Zionists do not necessarily need that religious motivation for desiring as much land or as few Palestinians as possible,” March elaborated.
He described the situation as a “nationalist project” aimed at achieving the largest possible state with as much land as possible for a Jewish state and changing the demographics of that land so it has a Jewish majority. “I would say it is an ideological goal of national expansion and the limits of that are not at all clear.”
March separately took part in a panel at the Islamic Thought Institute (IDE) in the capital Ankara.
Speaking about his book "On Muslim Democracy" in which he wrote his interviews with Ennahda leader Rashid al-Ghannouchi, he said that it consists of three parts containing 10 essays.
He stated that the book focuses on Islam and the understanding of democracy in Islam and recommended that participants who are curious about these issues read it.
Expressing hope that the book will be translated into Turkish one day, he added, "I think there is no appetite for such intellectual conversations, where there is such a high level of intellectual accumulation, open discussions, and a free public environment where people can have critical discussions about various concepts, other than Türkiye."
