From apartheid to democracy – a “blueprint” for a different future in Israel and Palestine | Politics books

WWhile Antonio Gramsci was in prison during Benito Mussolini’s fascist rule in Italy, he wrote in his prison notebooks about an “interregnum,” a transitional period between the dying old order and the unborn new order. That intervening period, he wrote, was “the time of monsters.”

These words, “the time of monsters,” can be used to describe the period of death and destruction that has raged over the past two years since October 7, 2023, in the narrow strip of land that includes the Gaza Strip. If the agreement reached between Israel and Hamas and brokered by Donald Trump goes ahead, it raises questions about what kind of future awaits the lands between the river and the sea – a mass of land controlled by the Israeli government and settlers inhabited by both Israelis and Palestinians, which represents Israel’s apartheid one-state reality.

So what’s next? The continuation of apartheid? A two-state solution where one state has no or limited capacity to act? More Israeli military occupation? An accelerating Nakba that expels Palestinians from the land more systematically? A neocolonial presence where some foreign entity or individual is the de facto temporary rulers?

Or, ultimately, something else – something that requires transforming existing relationships through a new process, a process that takes us powerfully beyond the time of monsters.

When the ceasefire agreement was reached, Los Angeles Times, In an article about the reactions in Israel, he quotes Udi Goren, an Israeli partying in the Hostage Square whose cousin was killed on October 7. Israel needs new faces to bring about change, he told the reporter: “It is time for us – Israelis and Palestinians – to support a better future, and to forge a new narrative for ourselves.”

It seems difficult to imagine a new narrative, given the last hundred years or so of history. But there are moments where transformation becomes possible, where changes on the ground can tear apart long-standing beliefs and biases, and where a new set of political and social relations makes what has long seemed impossible. We are not close to that moment, but change is happening, including shifts in opinion, new political realities, and a global solidarity movement for Palestine far more expansive than ever before.

The possibility of such a rupture and transformation is the basic premise underlying Michael Schiffer Omar Mann and Sarah Leah Whitson’s book, From Apartheid to Democracy: A Blueprint for Peace in Israel-Palestine. Published just days before a ceasefire agreement was reached, the book describes in detail the conditions for dismantling apartheid in Israel and Palestine.

Schaefer Omar Mann and Whitson have been deeply involved in the field for many years. Shafer Omar Mann, former editor of +972 magazine, and Whitson, a human rights lawyer and former Human Rights Watch advocate, both currently work at Democracy for the Arab World Now, which focuses on reforming US foreign policy in the Middle East and North Africa from a human rights perspective. The group was founded by former Washington Post columnist and Saudi democracy advocate Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed by Saudi assassins seven years ago.

When I first learned of Schiffer Omar Mann and Whitson’s “planned” concept a few months ago, I was skeptical in light of the horrific genocide unfolding in Gaza. The goal of the master plan is to “design the process of dismantling the Israeli military occupation of the occupied Palestinian territory and dismantling the apartheid regime.” To do this, Schaefer Omar Mann and Whitson created an actual working document for a transition that would end apartheid and lay the foundation for democracy in Israel and Palestine. They say it won’t happen the next day, the next month, or the next year. It can only happen after a process that leads to a pivotal rupture that provides the basis for something new.

We do not know what this rupture will entail, but the way has been paved over the past two years. A shift in attitudes toward Israel and Palestine in the United States and Europe may lead to the end of arms sales, or an expansion of boycott initiatives. Perhaps bodies such as the International Court of Justice will exert new forms of pressure – pressure that the diplomatic community decides to impose. Such developments could combine with mass movements outside Israel, making international isolation so extreme that Israel may be forced to reimagine its basic structures of inequality in order to rejoin the community of nations.

Schaefer, Omar Mann, and Whitson are realists: apartheid rule is deeply entrenched, operating in many ways beyond Israeli military occupation through an entire system of laws, practices, and norms that create and maintain a system of domination, including in pre-1967 Israel. These laws affect daily life, they write, including: “political representation and organization, freedom of expression, and use of land, ownership, zoning and other matters relating to property, immigration and personal legal status, including family law; access to natural and economic resources; Providing state services and benefits; police and security; and institutional distrust and perpetual suspicion toward non-Jewish citizens, residents, and others.”

They conclude that “merely ending the occupation and extending the current legal framework to the occupied territories is absolutely insufficient to dismantle apartheid.”

In each of these areas, the blueprint provides a map for how to begin to dismantle a deeply unequal system and move toward meaningful democracy in Israel and Palestine, whether through a single democratic state, a confederation, or even two contiguous states, with both peoples participating in a democratic process to choose a preferred option. One area where this shift is key is the freedom to move or remain where one is, they say, as restrictions on movement, they say, are one of the central tools the apartheid regime used to manage the Palestinian population.

The authors look to South Africa and Northern Ireland, which witnessed political change that seemed unimaginable. Drawing on these examples, the Blueprint outlines a multi-layered process of joint reconciliation, reparations and the creation of a comprehensive political framework.

The book was published before the ceasefire was reached, but it’s fair to say that the agreement will not pave the way for the plot anytime soon. We have not yet reached the point of rupture. Once we get there, it may reveal the new narrative that the scheme will help shape.

• Robert Gottlieb is Professor Emeritus at Occidental College and the author of more than a dozen books, including, most recently, Care-Centered Politics: From Home to Planet (MIT Press)

• From Apartheid to Democracy: A Blueprint for Peace in Israel and Palestine Now Out (University of California Press, $26.95)