True colours of the BDS movement....

They are more interested in the eradication of Israel than in Palestinian self-determination...

‘Rooted in a century of Palestinian civil resistance, and inspired by the anti-apartheid struggle, the campaign crowned earlier, partial boycotts to present a comprehensive approach to realising Palestinian self-determination’

This is how Omar Barghouti characterises the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which seeks to isolate Israel in every conceivable way, from banning Israeli-made goods for sale abroad to preventing Israeli-written books or academic papers to be made available to foreign universities. Writing in The Guardian, Barghouti's 'Beseiging Israel's seige' today celebrated the fifth birthday of the BDS campaign he founded and raises a number of questions about both the movement as a whole and Barghouti as an individual.

The most obvious question is this: Why does the BDS movement support Palestinian self-determination but deny the right to Jewish self-determination? There are many who believe that the Palestinians deserve an independent state, and oppose the continued occupation of the West Bank. Reading between the lines of his article, however, one notes that Barghouti is more interested with the eradication of an independent Jewish presence in the Middle East than he is with creating a sovereign Palestinian one.

As he points out, the campaign to isolate Israel, and only Israel, will continue indefinitely until the state recognises ‘the right of Palestinians refugees to return to their homes, as stipulated in UN resolution 194.’ What he doesn’t say is that the majority of these Palestinians are the descendants of those expelled in the wars of 1948 and 1967 but who have uniquely managed to retain the status of refugees. One large refugee camp is maintained by the United Nations in Balata, within the West Bank city of Nablus. Despite being on Palestinian soil, the 20,000 or so descendants of Arabs who mostly fled Jaffa in 1948 have not been granted Palestinian citizenship. Nor can they vote in municipal elections. Does this mean that the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah deserves to be boycotted, too?

The so-called Palestinian ‘right of return’, as many Israeli and international observers have noticed, would spell the demographic destruction of Israel as a Jewish state. This a point not lost on Barghouti in his more forthcoming guise as choir-addressing activist. Not only has he stated that ‘This [right of return] is something that we cannot compromise on’, he has also explicitly pointed out that ‘If the refugees were to return there would not be a two state solution, there would be a Palestine next to a Palestine rather than a Palestine next to Israel.’