Amid Israel's 'forever wars', Palestinians must not abandon the one-state solution
Since the declaration of the so-called ceasefire between Hamas and Israel in October 2025 - violated more than 2,000 times - and more dramatically since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran on 28 February, Palestine has been actively displaced from the centre of global attention.
When the US and Iran announced a two-week truce on 8 April, Israel simultaneously launched its largest wave of strikes on Lebanon, killing at least 303 people. In Gaza, it had bombed the Strip on 36 of the previous 40 days, killing at least 736 Palestinians since the October ceasefire alone.
That same day, the UN Commission of Inquiry warned that the war on Iran had "eclipsed" a surge in human rights violations against Palestinians.
This is the result of a deliberate process of political reframing by its rogue architects, who presented their violent militarism across the region as a fight against nuclear proliferation and the defence of international order. Yet this framing masks its real function: a wider imperial strategy aimed at restructuring the region and consolidating the Israeli genocidal regime as its hegemon.
Running in parallel is a deliberate political track - the deepening of normalisation between Israel and Arab regimes. Together, these two processes form a coherent strategy whose objective is to effectively bury the Palestinian right to self-determination.
Indeed, Palestine stands at the heart of this confrontation. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has regularly framed Israel's aggression in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran as a single campaign, in which the regime seeks to establish "security belts" across all three fronts.
Likewise, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has stated that the fate of Gaza would be determined by the outcome of the war on Iran and its allies - a strategic admission tying the future of Palestine to that war, and even going as far as declaring recently that villages in southern Lebanon would be destroyed according to "the Rafah and Khan Younis model" in Gaza.
What is unfolding is a single, expanding theatre of struggle in which Palestine is both a central objective and a decisive fault line
Iran's leadership has likewise framed the confrontation as extending beyond self-defence - declaring its commitment to the Palestinian cause as part of the war's rationale, reflecting the extent to which Palestine remains embedded in the regional balance of power.
Whatever the contradictions of the Iranian regime, its sustained targeting by the US-Israeli alliance cannot be separated from its political positioning in relation to Palestine and its challenge to US-led hegemony.
Therefore, what is unfolding is a single, expanding theatre of struggle in which Palestine is both a central objective and a decisive fault line.
This reality demands a fundamental reassessment of the Palestinian question - not as a localised conflict, but as a core component of a broader regional and global confrontation, raising urgent questions about the strategic horizons open to Palestinian elites, leaders and activists in a moment of profound instability and open-ended war.
The one-state imperative
The question of the democratic one-state solution has re-emerged at the centre of Palestinian political thought - driven by a deep structural crisis and by the conviction that it is the most just and lasting resolution.
The collapse of the two-state paradigm, the fragmentation of the Palestinian national movement, and the genocidal war on Gaza have collectively forced a reassessment of both strategy and political horizon.
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Yet no consensus among Palestinian elites has been reached on how to proceed from this moment towards something akin to what the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) formulated after the Nakba, when its political programme of return and liberation evolved into a vision of one secular democratic state.
The American-Zionist aggression across the region has also introduced a critical new variable. Whether the war on Iran results in the weakening or strengthening of the forces opposing Israeli hegemony, it will have direct implications for the feasibility, timing and trajectory of any political project in Palestine - including the one-state solution.
It is clear that Palestine lies at the heart of the illegal and brutal war on Iran. The imperial alliance views Iran as the last obstacle to the liquidation of the Palestinian cause and to the establishment of total Israeli colonial dominance over the region.
Moreover, even after the declared US-Iran truce, Israel has made it clear that it intends to engage in "forever wars" against those who threaten its expansionist ambitions.
The outcome of the confrontation with Iran remains uncertain, and its outcome may reshape the regional environment in ways that either constrain or expand Palestinian strategic options. So far, there is a consensus among commentators and experts that the imperial aggressors are trapped in this war of choice, while the Iranian regime and society defend themselves in a war of existence.
The Iranian people have the right to live and prosper in a free, democratic country, safe from the constant threats and aggression by global and regional colonial powers, which have been cynically masquerading as defenders of the Iranian people while raining destruction on the country's civilian infrastructure.
Two scenarios
If the US-Israeli campaign fails, whether militarily, politically or economically, several consequences are likely: US-Israeli deterrence will be eroded; Gulf monarchies will lose trust in the United States as a guarantor of their security, potentially prompting a retreat from normalisation with Israel; and regional actors opposing Israeli dominance will be strengthened.
In such a context, the Palestinian struggle may gain strategic depth and leverage. The one-state solution, as a comprehensive decolonial framework, would become more viable - a credible long-term project aligned with shifting power balances.
A weakened hegemonic order would also accelerate global transformations towards multipolarity, opening new diplomatic and legal avenues for Palestinian claims. It could reshape relations between Arab regimes and their peoples, whose aspirations for justice and freedom have been violently suppressed.
Conversely, if the campaign succeeds in significantly weakening Iran, the consequences for Palestinians would be severe. Israeli regional dominance would be consolidated, with continued impunity for genocidal crimes. Palestinian resistance would face increased marginalisation, prolonging the suffering of Palestinians, Lebanese, and other Arab peoples even more. Normalisation and authoritarian alignment in the Arab region would intensify and undermine any prospect of justice or real peace.
Under such conditions, the Palestinian movement may face increased isolation and repression, with the balance of power shifting decisively in favour of the colonial apartheid regime - potentially enabling further annexation, displacement and entrenchment of apartheid.
Even so, the Palestinian cause and the right to self-determination will not disappear.
The one-state solution must be reaffirmed as a long-term emancipatory horizon, even if less attainable in the immediate term, as Palestinians prioritise survival, resilience, grassroots mobilisation and the preservation of national identity and unity. Only by maintaining clarity of vision can political capitulation be prevented.
Rebuilding the movement
Regardless of regional dynamics, the central challenge remains internal: the crisis of Palestinian representation. The absence of a unified, democratic leadership structure undermines all strategic visions - whether one-state or otherwise.
Rebuilding the national movement requires reconstituting a representative political framework, integrating grassroots, diaspora and civil society actors and restoring a liberation-oriented political programme.
The one-state solution can serve as a unifying narrative, but only if embedded within a broader process of political renewal, combined with a detailed resistance strategy that takes into account the people's endurance.
The democratic one-state solution is a necessary strategic vision that preserves the political and moral integrity of the Palestinian struggle
Civil grassroots resistance, inside Palestine and abroad, becomes central to this. The continued call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) serves as a legal, legitimate and effective strategy. Civil resistance would involve all Palestinian geographies, including Palestinians inside the 1948-occupied areas. Anti-colonial Jews will also be able to engage in a co-resistance strategy, as opposed to the misleading coexistence model.
In a rapidly transforming regional and global order, what is at stake is not simply the fate of a political project, but the future of Palestine itself.
Far from being an isolated confrontation, the war on Iran is part of a broader imperial offensive aimed at consolidating Israeli dominance, entrenching normalisation with Arab regimes and foreclosing the very possibility of Palestinian self-determination.
The democratic one-state solution is a necessary strategic vision that preserves the political and moral integrity of the Palestinian struggle. To abandon it under conditions of pressure and defeat would be an act of surrender - an acceptance of fragmentation, subjugation and permanent dispossession.
To resist this requires a national movement that insists the struggle is not for partial rights or managed autonomy, but for full decolonisation, equality and historical justice.
In this sense, the one-state solution remains indispensable - a political compass in a moment of fragmentation and imperial war: a commitment to a future in which Palestine is neither erased nor subordinated, but fully liberated, democratic and shared on the basis of equality for all who live in it.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
This article was sourced from Middle East Eye.
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