Millions of activists hostile to Israel marched this weekend in coordinated demonstrations stretching from Washington, D.C., to London, Paris, Madrid and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Crowds repeated familiar chants including “Free, free Palestine” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
In interviews with Fox News Digital, three movement figures described [1] a vision involving one state called Palestine across the territory now comprising Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Their proposals included a Palestinian right of return and equal political, citizenship and voting rights alongside Jews currently living in Israel.
Under that framework, Israel would legally cease to exist as a separate Jewish state. The demographic figures presented also showed that Jews could be outnumbered under such an arrangement.
Israel currently has about 10 million residents, including roughly 7.8 million Jews, 2 million Palestinian Arabs, and 200,000 people from other communities. Another estimated 10.2 million Jews live worldwide, while about 5.5 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and Gaza and roughly 8 million live in the diaspora.
Activists have spent years accusing Israel of being a “settler colonial” state engaged in “apartheid” and “genocide.” Israeli leaders fiercely reject those allegations and maintain that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people while providing equal civil and political rights to Jewish, Christian, and Muslim citizens.
Hatem Abudayyeh, the Palestinian American founder of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network and a Muslim, advocated for a single state spanning 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.
Abudayyeh said the proposed state would include a right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants. He argued that implementing that policy would not require expelling the people, most of them Jewish, who currently live in Israel.
“It doesn’t mean that we’re going to kick people out,” Abudayyeh 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.”
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Abudayyeh also said his organization believes peace and justice require dismantling what he called “the racist system of Zionism.” The ADL describes Zionism as a “movement for the self-determination and statehood for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland, the land of Israel.”
Sam Husseini, a Palestinian American Christian, journalist and congressional candidate in Maryland’s 4th Congressional District, offered a similar political vision. He called for “one person, one vote” and said Palestinian refugees and their descendants should have a right to return or receive compensation.
Husseini suggested the country might be named “1948,” referencing the year Israel declared independence and Palestinians commemorate the “Nakba,” or catastrophe. He also said he believed many Jews could eventually accept the name Palestine if equal rights and protections were guaranteed.
Miko Peled, an Israeli-born Jewish activist and founder of the Palestine House in Washington, D.C., was equally direct. “It’s already one state; it’s just an apartheid state,” Peled said before describing his preferred outcome as a democracy called Palestine with equal rights.
Asked what the country should be called, Peled pointed to Palestine. “Israel is a new name. They renamed the country 78 years ago, so the proper name would be Palestine,” he said.
Protesters in New York City explicitly rejected a two-state solution, chanting, “We don’t want no two state!” In London, a woman using a megaphone declared, “There is only one state!” before the crowd continued with praise for Palestine.
Olivia DiNucci, the local coordinator for CodePink, told Fox News Digital that Palestinians in Palestine would decide the future. When asked whether Palestine included modern-day Israel, she walked away and later complained on social media that she had been asked “gotcha questions.”
The demonstrations are supported by a network combining socialist and communist organizations with Palestinian and Muslim activist groups. Neville Roy Singham, an American tech tycoon living in Shanghai, has poured $278 million into a communist network that includes CodePink, the People’s Forum, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, BreakThrough News and the ANSWER Coalition.
Those groups have become organizing, media, and logistical centers for demonstrations promoting slogans such as “Free Palestine” and “from the river to the sea.” The interviews put a blunt political definition behind those chants: one state called Palestine replacing Israel, accompanied by a Palestinian right of return.