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WASHINGTON, D.C. — This weekend, millions of anti-Israel activists marched through the streets of cities in coordinated actions from America’s capital to London, Paris, Madrid and Kuala Lumpar, Malaysia, chanting the familiar refrains of “Free, free Palestine” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
But for the first time, communicated frankly in exclusive interviews with Fox News Digital, three anti-Israel leaders acknowledged the goal: one state called “Palestine” encompassing modern-day Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, with a Palestinian “right of return” to the new country and equal political, voting and citizenship rights for Palestinians alongside Jews currently living in Israel.
Most significantly, in the political vision they described, Israel would legally cease to exist as a separate Jewish nation-state and Jews would be quickly overwhelmed demographically.
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The current population of Israel is about 10 million, including about 7.8 million Jews, 2 million Palestinian Arabs (including Palestinians and most of them Muslim), and 200,000 people from other communities. There are another estimated 10.2 million Jews worldwide.
There are about 5.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and about 8 million Palestinians in the diaspora, totaling about 13.5 million.
The candor of the anti-Israel leaders lays bare the political conclusion of an argument that activists have spent years advancing on the streets, through sympathetic media outlets and in legal forums: that Israel is a “settler colonial” state practicing “apartheid” and “genocide,” and therefore should not continue to exist in its current form as a Jewish state. Israeli leaders have fiercely rejected those allegations, disputing accusations of “genocide” and “apartheid” and maintaining that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people with equal civil and political rights for citizens that include Jews, Christians and Muslims.
Advocates for Israel note that the nation’s critics rarely apply the same historical lens of human-rights analysis to Arab and Muslim-majority states, many of which emerged from the collapse of empires, wars and population upheavals that displaced millions, including Jews expelled from their countries, today often restricting political, religious and minority rights.
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In Chicago, Hatem Abudayyeh, the Palestinian-American founder of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network and a Muslim, said the new nation would be “one democratic secular state of Palestine.” Jewish Israeli-born community leader Miko Peled, founder of the Palestine House in Washington, D.C., said “the proper name would be Palestine.” And Maryland congressional candidate Sam Husseini, a Palestinian-American Christian, floated another name for the vision of the one state: “1948,” marking the year Israel declared independence and Palestinians commemorate as the “Nakba,” or catastrophe, but he said even Israeli Jews would one day accept another name: “Palestine.”
Their answers provide a striking interpretation from inside a movement where activists have traditionally danced around their demands with euphemisms about “liberation” and media outlets have obscured their answers even when they have been transparent.
On Washington, D.C.’s First Avenue SE, Fox News Digital asked Olivia DiNucci, local coordinator for CodePink, a far-left nonprofit, what her group sees as a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In her work for CodePink, DiNucci disrupts hearings, restaurant meals and town halls to shout at lawmakers and policymakers who support the state of Israel.
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“Palestinians in Palestine will decide, DiNucci said.
Asked if “Palestine” includes modern day Israel, she spun around and walked away. Later, she posted a message on social media, saying she was asked “gotcha questions.”
This weekend, protesters signaled their position with certainty, explicitly rejecting the two-state solution that has dominated international diplomacy for decades.
In New York City, the Party for Socialism and Liberation circulated video of protesters marching through the streets chanting: “1-2-3-4. Occupation no more. 5-6-7-8. Israel is a terrorist state.”
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Then came the point: “We don’t want no two state!”
In London, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign promoted a 15-second video of a woman with a megaphone shouting: “There is only one state!”
“Palestine, ’48!” protesters responded.
“Say it loud, say it clear!” she continued. “Palestine, you make us proud!”
Back in Washington, D.C., protesters carried signs declaring, “LAND YOU HAVE 2 KILL FOR IS NOT YOURS,” a message that challenged Israel’s claim to the land itself, while a banner proclaiming, “THE FIGHT FOR LIBERATION IS OURS,” framed the struggle as one for the territory. The demonstrators yesterday didn’t address the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, but many have called them justified.
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The one-state demand is being amplified within a powerful protest infrastructure. The broader “red-green” alliance brings socialist and communist groups together on the streets with Palestinian and Muslim activist organizations, while organizations including the Democratic Socialists of America and nonprofits in the network funded by Neville Roy Singham, an American-born tech tycoon living in Shanghai, help organize, promote and amplify anti-Israel demonstrations.
Singham, has poured $278 million into a pro-communist network, including CodePink, the People’s Forum, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, BreakThrough News and the ANSWER Coalition, which have become major organizing, media and logistical hubs for the protest movement. The result is a powerful infrastructure amplifying slogans such as “Free Palestine” and “from the river to the sea,” even when the organizations and activists doing the amplifying don’t themselves explicitly spell out the one-state political vision described to Fox News Digital.
‘One democratic secular state of Palestine’
From Chicago, Abudayyeh told Fox News Digital that the U.S. Palestinian Community Network advocates for one democratic state across the territory that today encompasses Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.
“Our points of unity, from the very beginning of our existence, included one democratic secular state of Palestine,” he said.
“And for decades and decades, we’ve been saying that…the only true solution that can bring peace and justice to all that live there is … one democratic state,” which includes the West Bank, Gaza and “1948 Palestinian territories,” a term used to describe the land that Israel claimed as a nation in 1948.
This can only happen, he said, if “the racist system of Zionism is dismantled.”
The ADL, a leading Jewish organization based in New York, describes Zionism as a “movement for the self-determination and statehood for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland, the land of Israel.”
Abudayyeh said the new state would include a “right of return” for Palestinian refugees and their descendants. “Our points of unity from day one included the right of return,” he said.
Activists from a U.S.-based network of groups called “Al-Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition” joined the protest in Los Angeles and posted a message online: “OUR PEOPLE WILL RETURN, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!
“If all of our refugees, who have the internationally recognized right to return to Palestine, are able to return, and the system, the racist system is dismantled, then all the people there can live in peace and justice,” Abudayyeh told Fox News Digital. “That’s our position. It’s always been our position. We’re not going to abandon the five to seven million refugees that we have.”
“They have the right to go back to the homes and lands in which they were exiled,” he explained.
Abudayyeh said that wouldn’t mean removing the people – most of them Jewish – living in Israel.
“It doesn’t mean that we’re going to kick people out,” he said. “It just means that these folks have an internationally recognized right, and you will never get peace and justice there unless you uphold that right.”
“I believe, very clearly, USPCN believes very clearly that there can be peace and justice as long as that system, that racist system of Zionism is dismantled,” Abudayyeh said. “That’s the essence of it.”
Abudayyeh compared the Palestinian movement’s objective to the international campaign against apartheid South Africa. “And we’re getting close to having international consensus today on the question of Israel and Zionism, where Israel doesnt have the “right to exist as a racist, Zionist, apartheid, white supremacist state.”
“That’s what we say,” he continued. “We’re adamant about that. We’re clear about it. Unabashed.”
Fox News Digital asked Abudayyeh whether “Palestine” includes modern-day Israel when protest leaders and activists chant “Palestine will be free” or “Free, free Palestine.”
“The majority of the majority of the people, especially in the past period, have moved to that conclusion,” Abudayyeh said.
‘Maybe the name of 1948’
Husseini, a Palestinian-American journalist running for Congress in Maryland’s 4th Congressional District, offered a similar one-state vision and an unusual proposal for what the country might be called.
Standing on First Avenue SE, between the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Capitol, Husseini told Fox News Digital that his long-term vision is “one person, one vote,” coupled with a Palestinian right of return.
“Ultimately, long-term, I that it should be one person, one vote,” Husseini said.
“Why aren’t they allowed back into their homes? So I think that they should,” he said of Palestinian refugees. “I mean, that includes myself. I don’t know that I would actually move back there, but as a descendant of a Palestinian who was forcibly displaced, I should have that right or compensation.”
Husseini offered another possibility for the country’s name.
“I’ve often thought of a novel proposal because people get hung up on the names. Are they going to call it Israel or are they going call it Palestine?” Husseini said.
“I’ve toyed with the idea of calling it 1948, having a country with a number signifying the year of this cataclysm, which should be the last gasp of imperialism.”
If the new state is called Palestine, Husseini said, “I think a lot of Jews, when they think about it, will say, so long as they have equal rights and all are protected, will adopt the term Palestine.”
‘The proper name would be Palestine’
Standing on Pennsylvania Avenue SE, the roar of the demonstrators getting closer as they marched from the U.S. Capitol to talks at the Palestine House of Freedom, Miko Peled, an Israeli-born Jewish activist, was equally blunt about what a “Free Palestine” means to him.
“Well, our vision, our mission, and our vision is to educate people to see that a free Palestine, which means a post-Zionist, post-apartheid Palestine with equal rights and the right of the Palestinians to return, is the best vision that will benefit everybody who lives there currently, which means Israelis and Palestinians,” he said.
Asked whether that meant one state, he answered yes.
“It’s already one state, it’s just an apartheid state,” Peled said.
“So that’s our vision, to create a real democracy, free Palestine, with equal rights.”
Fox News Digital asked what that country would be called.
“Well, historically the country was called Palestine for thousands of years and so it should be called Palestine,” Peled said. “Israel is a new name. They renamed the country 78 years ago, so the proper name would be Palestine.”
For Peled, the familiar protest demand “Free Palestine” has a literal political meaning: One state with the new name “Palestine.”
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