PLO: Israel's national homeland bill ends the two-state solution

The Executive Committee of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation has strongly condemned the Israeli cabinet’s approval of a draft law stating that Israel is the national homeland of the Jewish people only, saying that the law aims to eliminate the two-state solution.

In a press statement sent to Anadolu news agency on Tuesday, the committee said that: “The Jewish national law is designed to eliminate the two-state solution by forcing the ‘Greater Israel’ project of a Jewish state onto the historic land of Palestine.”

It continued: “The draft bill is a unilateral cancellation by Israel of the 1993 Letters of Mutual Recognition, constituting a violation against the holy places of all religions other than Judaism, with the latter being the only identity of the state.”

“The draft bill also reveals the true essence of the nature of Israel’s distorting political and judicial systems, which breach the international principles prohibiting racism and ethnic cleansing, and build upon a long series of racist laws, proposals and practices that reflect the official political decision to turn the conflict into a religious one, which fuels the on-going violence on an ideological basis,” the statement added.

The PLO and Israel recognised each other under the Oslo agreement in 1993.

Last Sunday, the Israeli cabinet approved the draft bill of a law explicitly stating that Israel is the national homeland for the Jewish people only, in preparation for its presentation before the Knesset next week.

The PLO Executive Committee said that declaring Israel to be the homeland for Jews only is a racist attempt to distort and falsify the historic Palestinian narrative and to erase the Palestinian presence while taking it out of its historical context.

“The draft resolution completes and reinforces the Israeli Law of Return, which grants every Jew in the world ‘the right’ to return to Palestine while depriving others of the same right, particularly the indigenous Palestinian people.”

The committee called on the UN and the international community to take concrete steps to hold Israel accountable and to support the Palestinian legal endeavour at the UN Security Council later this month to determine a timeframe for ending the occupation and establishing the State of Palestine on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital.