BDS is about ethnic demonization, not ending the occupation

The debate about the proposed Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel came to public attention during the recent NSW state election.

One of the more contentious arguments advanced by BDS advocates is that the BDS is simply intended to end the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, and hence will actually facilitate a two-state solution and associated Israeli-Palestinian peace and reconciliation.

But in my opinion, the BDS is not intended to promote conflict resolution at all. Rather, its key advocates are nearly all anti-Zionist fundamentalists who favour the creation of an Arab State of Greater Palestine in place of Israel. Their oft-quoted suggestions that a successful BDS will facilitate Israeli-Palestinian peace are at the very least fantasy, and more likely, deliberately disingenuous.

In the old days of the 1970s and 1980s, the anti-Zionist fundamentalists were quite honest about their intentions. They were so committed to the Arab boycott that they would not even utter the word "Israel", and instead used the term "Occupied Palestine" to describe Green Line Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. They often spoke of revolutionary violence and struggle to eliminate what they called the "Zionist entity". But in today's age of political correctness, they use much softer terms. They speak of non-violent strategies to persuade Israel and Israelis to do the right thing.

A number of BDS advocates actually claim that a successful BDS will advance Israeli-Palestinian peace and reconciliation. For example, Associate Professor Jake Lynch, a self-described peace researcher and Director of the University of Sydney Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, opined in crikey.com that a BDS would be more successful than the various failed international peace initiatives in promoting a viable two-state solution.

Similarly, Joe Wakim, the founder of the Australian Arabic Council, argued that the BDS would be more effective than the two Palestinian intifadas in facilitating Israeli-Palestinian peace.

And Emeritus Professor Stuart Rees from the University of Sydney also asserted that the BDS would be successful in ending decades of Israeli-Palestinian violence.

The problem with this analysis is that the leading Palestinian proponents of BDS do not seek an end to the occupation to facilitate a peaceful two-state solution, but rather the demonization of all Israeli Jews and the delegitimization of Israel. The key statement distributed by the Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel in July 2004 is crystal clear that the first and foremost priority is to reverse the events of 1948 that lead to the Palestinian refugee tragedy, whereas ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967 is only identified as a secondary task.

The PCACB statement suggests that Israel is solely responsible for the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948. Yet as noted by the seminal Israeli historian Benny Morris, the exile of the Palestinians occurred during a brutal war in which the Palestinian leaders and the Arab states openly threatened to destroy the newly founded State of Israel and massacre its population. This was a zero-sum conflict which the Israelis won and the Palestinians lost. The 'notorious' Plan Dalet was not an Israeli master plan to expel the Arab population, but rather a series of military measures to defend the borders against invading Arab armies.

An associated PCACB statement adds that any conflict resolution must include the right of the 1948 Palestinian refugees and their millions of descendants to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.

In fact, the December 1948 United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 was clearly conditional, and formally linked to acceptance of the earlier UN partition resolution creating both Jewish and Arab states in Palestine, and a negotiated peace. The resolution did not provide for any universal "right of return" of all 1948 refugees, but rather applied only to those refugees who were willing to live in peace with Israel.

In practice, both the Palestinian leaders and the Arab governments initially rejected the resolution precisely because it implied recognition of Israel's legitimacy. Today it is universally acknowledged that any large-scale return of 1948 Palestinian refugees to Israel would be likely to bring civil war and enormous bloodshed rather than Israeli-Palestinian peace and reconciliation. and is totally incompatible with a two-state solution.

A/Professor Jake Lynch in his earlier cited contribution asks with apparent frustration what alternative measures would opponents of a BDS propose to promote a two-state solution? But the answer to this question is obvious. Both sides of the conflict have to make major concessions to their dominant narrative to facilitate two states. The large number of Israeli and Jewish doves would be the first to recommend that the current Israeli government change course, and abandon any proposals to implement a Greater Israel strategy involving permanent occupation of the West Bank. A good first step at the very least would be to evacuate all settlers and all settlements east of the security barrier with a long-term view to swapping the larger settlement blocs in exchange for land inside Green Line Israel.

And similarly Palestinian peace advocates know that they will have to reject violence per se whether initiated by Hamas or Fatah, and accept partial rather than absolute justice which means foregoing any individual or collective claims by refugees to land or homes inside Green Line Israel.

A topical example of a real peace initiative based precisely on these principles of mutual compromise and concessions has been presented just this week by an Israeli non-government coalition headed by the son of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Yuval Rabin. The Israeli Peace Initiative noticeably avoids any of the blaming and demonising language used by the Palestinian advocates of a BDS, and instead proposes a win-win two-state solution.

As for positive local examples of promoting peace and dialogue in Israel/Palestine, Professor Lynch only has to look in his own backyard. Instead of joining the Marrickville Council in a divisive campaign of hate and vilification against Israelis, the Leichhardt Council brought together representatives of local Jews and Arabs/Palestinians with a commitment to "peace and justice in the Middle East". They chose to support a joint project between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank rather than demonising one group or the other.