News Analysis: BDS movement proves effective in face of Israel with decade on

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is the largest national coalition among the Palestinian civil society. Israeli officials have accused it of being an anti-Semitic group, but Palestinians deny this accusation.

It was established in 2005 as a non-violent human rights movement that calls for ending the Israeli occupation and the "apartheid system" and to hold it accountable under international law.

Last Saturday, the BDS movement marked its first decade by holding a national conference in Ramallah. Wassel Abu-Yousef, speaking on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Executive Committee, said "the PLO has taken into consideration the importance of having a relationship with the BDS movement at all levels."

FIGHTING OVERSEAS

Being a grassroots rights movement, the BDS has attracted several hundreds of activists around the world to carry out campaigns that call for boycott and divestment from Israel economically, culturally and academically, and to impose sanctions that would make government to take legal measures to pressure Israel.

They've succeeded to influence governments and public opinion, with thousands of academics, artists, activists and scholars endorsing the Academic and Cultural Boycott at individual and institutional levels.

On March 24, the Geneva based UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution that would put together a database of all business enterprises operating in Jewish settlements within the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967.

In November 2015, the European Union (EU) introduced new guidelines through which some of goods produced in settlements within the 1967 territories are labeled.

As a result of direct and indirect BDS efforts, a number of companies have divested from firms working with Israel or firms violating UN stipulated rights.

Such companies as French telecom giant Orange and large corporation Veolia have pulled out of business partnerships in Israel.

According to the World Investment Report by the UN Conference on Trade and Developmen (UNCTAD), foreign direct investment into Israel in 2014 dropped by 46 percent compared to 2013, due to the BDS impact.

HOMEBOUND BATTLEFIELD

Mustafa Barghouti, secretary general of Palestinian National Initiative party and member of the BDS conference preparatory committee, said that "Israel does not want the Palestinians to resist in any form, peacefully or non-peacefully, they want us to accept to be slaves of occupation and apartheid and this will never happen."

He added that "BDS is not anti-Semitic, it's not against Jewish people, and it's not against the people of Israel. It is against the government of Israel, its occupation and system of apartheid."

While many have seen the BDS conference in Ramallah as a celebration of an eventful year in 2015, observers have said that the organizing of an Israeli anti-BDS conference is recognition of the effectiveness of the movement.

Late March, Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronot held a conference in Jerusalem on the BDS, where experts and politicians tried to put together a quick response strategy to counter the growing effects of the BDS movement worldwide.

In the conference, some Israeli politicians gave recommendations aiming at halting the growing threat. Such recommendations included "targeted civil eliminations," which was interpreted as a call for "targeted killing" in Israeli media, and revoking citizenship or residency status of BDS activists who live in Israel.

"I am unnerved, but certainly undeterred, by the thinly veiled threat of physically harming me and my BDS colleagues," co-founder of the BDS movement Omar Barghouti told Xinhua.

He said these threats must be seen in light of "increased Israeli lawlessness and criminal impunity. These vile threats must be exposed to the world and presented in the mainstream as part of Israel's serious human rights violations."

He said "the only way to stop BDS is to stop the occupation, the settler colonialism and the apartheid regime." Endit