Press Releases

BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights is proud to announce the release of the first Working Paper in a series of five papers on Decolonization: The Case of Palestine.

The Series is prompted by the recent shifting discourse on Palestine, which is moving away from the erroneous national conflict and conflict resolution approach and is instead adopting more accurate and critical modes of analysis, namely the colonization and apartheid frameworks. The paradigm shift, while a development deserving of recognition, is insufficient in and of itself to realize and guarantee the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. Rather, the corollary next step following the recognition of Israel as an apartheid-colonial regime is to specify an appropriate course of action for dismantling this regime and advancing such an approach in tangible ways.

As such, the forthcoming series of Working Papers intends to address this issue by outlining a comprehensive approach for rights-based decolonization over all of Mandatory Palestine, which is the only suitable and just solution for the liberation of Palestine and its people. The first Working Paper (no. 30), the Introduction, establishes the framework for decolonization in Palestine, the subsequent papers will include an in-depth exploration of the required actions, processes, and means for achieving complete decolonization in Mandatory Palestine.

Working Paper No. 30: Decolonization: The Case of Palestine - Introduction

The Introduction necessarily contends with the nature of the Israeli regime and outlines the relationship between its three main pillars - colonization, apartheid, and forcible transfer. Upon considering the Israeli-Zionist ideology of racial supremacy, racial elimination, and racial domination, and how those dogmas have been activated through policies and practices of forcible displacement and transfer, colonization, and apartheid, it becomes evident that the only approach to dismantling the domination of the Israeli regime is rights-based decolonization on the whole of Mandatory Palestine.

The paper then proceeds to consider the theoretical and legal foundations of decolonization in order to develop a decolonization framework that is appropriate for the context of Palestine. Such a framework must necessarily uproot the root causes of Israeli apartheid, colonization, and forcible transfer, and thereby be grounded in the Palestinian people’s inalienable rights to self-determination and return. Entrenching the framework in a rights-based approach bridges the gap between decolonization and a political program for Palestinian liberation.

Accordingly, the paper identifies a three-tiered rights-based decolonization approach for Palestine in that it encompasses: (1) dismantling the Israeli colonial-apartheid regime in all of Mandatory Palestine inclusive of the structures that enable and reinforce its functioning; (2) remedying and reversing the impacts of Israel’s colonial-apartheid laws, policies, and practices specifically through providing reparations that fulfill the Palestinian people’s rights; (3) and developing a new rights-based political structure in Mandatory Palestine that guarantees human rights for all, ensures stability, welfare, and development, and integrates mechanisms for reconciliation and justice.

Therefore, the Introduction paper establishes the foundations for the decolonization framework which will be utilized in the remaining four papers of the series on Decolonization: The Case of Palestine.

The remaining papers of the Decolonization Series will address how the pillars of Israeli colonization, apartheid, and forcible transfer are deployed throughout Mandatory Palestine, while simultaneously addressing the fundamental and inalienable political, economic, social, and cultural rights of the Palestinian people in a decolonized Palestine. More specifically, the series will be comprised the following working papers:[1]

• Return, Property Restitution, Compensation and Non-repetition
• Political Decolonization
• Socio-Economic Decolonization
• Cultural Decolonization