2. Solution to Israel’s Colonial-Apartheid Regime:
Decolonization and Eradication of Root Causes
Recognizing that Israel is a colonial-apartheid regime dictates that the
solution must be rights-based decolonization on the whole of Mandatory
Palestine. Ending a colonial-apartheid regime is not, and cannot be,
dependent on the will of the colonizers and oppressors. Moreover,
colonialism and apartheid simply cannot end with the withdrawal of a
colonial power or the shifting of borders so long as this colonial power
continues to deny the right to self-determination of the people it has
colonized.30 This is particularly so considering that self-determination
has become the “normative framework for advancing decolonization.”31
Within any colonial structure, “the existing system is fundamentally and
irreparably flawed”32 and, indeed, “there is no freedom to be found in a
settler state, either one that would seek to give it or take it away.”33 It then
follows that the way to ensure the liberation of the Palestinian people
is only through all-encompassing decolonization, uprooting the root
causes of Israeli apartheid and colonization as well as Palestinian
forcible transfer, and dismantling the political, socio-economic,
legal and ideological elements of the colonial-apartheid regime.
2.1. Theoretical Background on Decolonization
While an in-depth discussion of the factors driving the “core period”34 of
decolonization in the mid twentieth century is outside the scope of this
30 Tilley (n 18), 15.
31 Albanese, (n 9).
32 Michael Yellow Bird and Waziyatawin (eds), For Indigenous Eyes Only: A Decolonization Handbook
(SAR Press 2005), 4.
33 Jarrett Martineau, ‘Fires of Resistance’ (The New Inquiry, 24 November 2016) <https://
thenewinquiry.com/fires-of-resistance/> accessed 5 April 2023.
34 Pransenjit Duara (ed), Decolonization: Perspectives from Now and Then (Rewriting Histories) (1st
edition, Routledge 2003), 1 [emphasis in original].
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