Eight Years of the BDS Movement: Where Have We Come Since 2005? (al-Majdal, Autumn 2013)

New Article Submission

Thank you for your interest in Jadaliyya. We welcome all submissions. The most significant requirement is for Jadaliyya submissions to be analytically compelling and offer a perspective or argument that has not been covered at length either on Jadaliyya or elsewhere. Because of the volume of submissions, well-written pieces are prioritized. Length is flexible, 1000 to 2500 words is the average range. However, we will accept longer pieces. Once submitted, several members of the editorial committee will review your piece and one of them will inform you of the decision.
Author Details
Article Details
Select Countries
Select Keywords
Select Topics
Only RTF, Word, and Pages documents accepted.

Recommended image size: 762x800 px

Location of each image should be indicated in the text of the article via a square bracket caption that includes: (1) a description of the image; (2) the photographer/designer and source of the image. Please note we only use images you as the author have the right to use, which usually means those of your own creation or those published under Creative Commons. Alternatively, you need specific permission from the copyright holder.
Please read the Release Form and provide an electronic signature [your full name] below to confirm that you accept its terms
Required
Hyperlink words in your article if they refer to links on the internet. We encourage more, rather than less, links (try to avoid footnotes—embed them as hyperlinks if possible)

Article added successfully.

Pages Menu BETA
Nov 12, 2013 Palestine-Israel
[Palestinian flag waves at a pro-BDS event in Victoria, Australia, September 10 2011. Image by Kate Ausburn.] [Palestinian flag waves at a pro-BDS event in Victoria, Australia, September 10 2011. Image by Kate Ausburn.]

Eight Years of the BDS Movement: Where Have We Come Since 2005? (al-Majdal, Autumn 2013)

By : BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights

BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights Announces the Autumn 2013 Edition of al-Majdal

As the Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement passes the eight year point since the 2005 Call, the 54th issue of al-Majdal evaluates its progress and remarks on areas for development, and spotlights current initiatives attempting to build an effective practice of the BDS tactic. The principal challenge for those seeking to wield the tool is connecting BDS to domestic practices of resistance and maintaining a cohesive moral position. 

Eight Years in Context: BDS Indicators

Eight years since the 2005 BDS Call, the principal question for the movement is if the tactic is being incorporated into a common Palestinian vision and political commitment? It is important to cultivate a culture of ‘internal’ resistance (within the homeland) that feeds into actions on ‘external’ levels (internationally). Several factors contribute to the current condition of political inaction among the Palestinian populace: pending reform of the Palestine Liberation Organization, fractured Palestinian political factions, the reign of the Palestinian Authority and logic of Oslo, the widespread disappointment with the Palestinian leadership’s performance and the growth of an ‘NGO culture’ oriented towards donors’ agendas rather than collective concerns. As a result, Palestinian national values of struggle for liberation have receded.

We expect, and hope, that the BDS movement will play a significant role in reviving the resistance values marginalized by the Oslo approach. However, the impact of ‘internal’ BDS may not be a determining factor in ending apartheid and ensuring justice, since the ability of separating oneself from the system is in many ways impossible.2 Rather, boycotts, divestment and sanctions will succeed by garnering traction abroad – motivating third state governments, public institutions, the private sector and the international populace to act on their responsibility to fight against injustice. At the same time, while BDS feeds off of and evolves with external support, it must drive from Palestinian activism itself, from a Palestinian constituency. Thus, Palestinian commitment and participation in BDS campaigns remains as the keystone for mobilizing effective international solidarity.

On the international level, however, the question of whether the BDS movement has moved from organizing acts of symbolic support to affecting policy makers and public opinion is not yet clear. Although community awareness-raising and advocacy initiatives targeting specific products, events or corporations are increasingly prolific, these activities have not reached the point where states and governments find themselves compelled to align their policies with human rights in significant ways. Small shifts, such as the European Union’s funding guidelines for 2014, point to the potential influence BDS could have. The BDS movement’s success will be evaluated by its ability to put Palestinian rights on the agenda of local and public elections internationally.

In addition to causing policy changes internationally, the impact of the BDS movement will be evaluated by Palestinian commitment to the movement and if BDS is able to support a revival of national values and the culture of resistance among Palestinian communities. Moreover, the effectiveness of BDS is closely related to maintaining Palestinian priorities – namely, the three core principles outlined in the 2005 BDS Call– over pressures to compromise them from international stakeholders, even the good intentioned solidarity activists, third states and NGOs.

Advancing BDS with political consciousness and a moral compass is a struggle in need of regular evaluation and constructive criticism. Such habits will help to ensure that BDS remains one of the leading tools for promoting Palestinian rights and achieving liberation.

Contents

This issue of al-Majdal features four analyses of BDS as a tactic followed by four examples of BDS campaigning in progress.

Manar Makhoul outlines characteristics of the BDS discourse in the past eight years with a few suggestions on goals for the movement in the future. Complementary to Manar’s article, Amjad Alqasis wonders where did the ‘S’ in the BDS go expanding on BADIL’s presentation at the BDS annual conference held in Bethlehem earlier this year. Steven Friedman relates South Africa’s experience with the anti-apartheid struggle, that ultimately led to state sanctions on the apartheid regime, to Palestine. After building the centrality of a popular base to the boycott campaign, Friedman offers two avenues to focus the Palestinian BDS campaign on “effective politics”: broad appeal and well-developed organization. In a reprint of Nimer Sultany’s critique from 2011, the commentary details three intellectual potholes to watch out for and repair on the road to a collective boycott.

Academics from around the world launched a BDS campaign against the oral history conference to be held at Hebrew University in 2014. Rosemary Sayigh details the University’s role in ongoing human rights violations and demonstrates the academic’s responsibility to refrain from such complicity. Aneta Jerska, a coordinator for an all-Europe BDS committee, maps the challenges and opportunities for BDS activism throughout the continent. In particular, Jerska evaluates the recently published European Union guidelines that will require the EU to distinguish the occupied Palestinian territory in post-2014 funding budgets. In her article, a Belgian activist, Sophie Abdellah referred to “hitting a brick wall” in BDS campaigning. The ‘brick wall’ refers to the resistance among some Western publics to hearing about Israel’s pariah status within the international legal community. Abdellah outlines the formula that some activists applied to penetrate this barrier. The author demonstrates the adaptiveness of BDS activists in Belgium and their use of effective targeted messaging. Finally, Bisan Mitri appraises the potential for implementing BDS through the Palestinian tourism sector in the occupied Palestinian territory. Mitri documents the recommendations from a workshop on BDS and Palestinian tourism held in Bethlehem.

To further advance a shift in public opinion, the priorities of the BDS movement must be anchored in the needs of the Palestinian people. A challenging task, one step forward is to clearly demarcate the way non-Palestinians can fulfil a supporting role – principled solidarity. At the same time, in this moment of a void in Palestinian representation, the BDS movement must restrain itself from overstepping boundaries between its role as a tactic of resistance and a representative of Palestinians.

Eight Years of the BDS Movement: Where have we come since 2005? 

Issue #54, Autumn 2013

Editorial

Eight years in context: BDS Indicators, Badil Staff

Features

Home and Away: a review of BDS discourse, Manar Makhoul

What happened to the S in BDS?, Amjad Alqasis

Lessons From the Campaign for Sanctions on Apartheid South Africa, Steven Friedman

Three Comments on the Boycott Movement, Nimer Sultany

The Hebrew University and ‘Hasbara’, Rosemary Sayigh

Campaigning for Palestinian Rights in Europe, Aneta Jerska

Complicity and Apartheid: On campaigning for Palestinian Rights in Belgium, Sophia Abdellah

What to do about colonial tourism?, Bisan Mitri

Jayyous: a view through the gate in the Wall, Badil Staff

[The announcement and contents above were originally published in the Autumn 2013 edition of al-Majdal.]
Tags
Feb 16, 2011 Lebanon
Jadaliyya Reports By :
Jadaliyya Reports

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412