AWL campaigns for the right of the Palestinian people to set up an independent state of its own, side by side with Israel, and the provision of sufficient aid and compensation to allow the Palestinians to develop their society. In other words: two nations, two states.
We argue for a settlement between the Arab world and Israel in which Israel's right to exist within secure borders is recognised by the Arab states and its relationship with them is "normalised". Within both Israeli and Palestinian states we argue, of course, against sectarian discrimination and for equal rights for all citizens.
The Palestinian Arabs are still dispersed and oppressed today as a sequel of the Jewish-Arab war of 1947-8. In that war, three quarters of a million Palestinian Arabs were driven out by the Israeli forces, or fled. However, the plight of the Palestinians is not just Israel's responsibility, and it cannot be rectified by seeking revenge on Israel. The Israeli Jews are a nation, and should have the same rights as other nations.
In 1948, also, the Arab states (then mostly under British domination) made war on the newly-formed state of Israel to try to "drive the Jews into the sea". The Palestinians still have to live in refugee camps over half a century later because the Arab states want to use them as a living indictment of Israel. The remnant of Palestine allotted to the Arabs by the UN in 1947 was not unilaterally taken over by Israel, but divided between Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, most of it going to Jordan. Palestinians have suffered discrimination in the Arab states where they live, and massacre at the hands of Jordan, Syria, and Christian Arabs in Lebanon.
We support Israelis who oppose the occupation and those who refuse to serve in the Israeli army in the Occupied Territories. We have demonstrated outside the Israeli embassy in London for Palestinian rights and to demand the release of jailed "refuseniks".
We combat those who describe Israel as a uniquely bad and vicious state. This attitude, identifying "Zionism" as akin to "racism" or "imperialism", inescapably implies hostility to that big majority of Jews world-wide who inevitably and instinctively (though often critically) identify with Israel. Those Jews are damned as "Zionists". "Absolute anti-Zionism" on the left spills over into outright anti-Jewish attitudes - not racist, but nonetheless effectively anti-Jewish.
We fight the left anti-semitism lurking under the ideologies of "anti-Islamophobia" and "absolute anti-Zionism".
Further reading:
The AWL pamphlet, Two Nations Two States
