Boycotts, Nonviolence, and Palestinian-Israeli Conflict Transformation

by Lynn Gottlieb

As an American, a Jew, a rabbi, a peacemaker, and a solidarity activist, I want to open a conversation about “BDS” — boycott, divestment, and sanctions — the nonviolent strategy supported by the majority of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, Israel, and the diaspora as the preferred method of ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. I am writing about BDS from a particular framework of understanding:

1. Everyone has a “right to exist.”
2. The same right to national self-determination that Israelis exercise for themselves is equally valid for Palestinians. Isn’t that the assumption underlying the “two-state solution” peace process?
3. While security concerns are central to peace for both parties, the nature of the conflict is rooted in ongoing land appropriation.
4. Human rights and not identity-based partisanship is basic to the establishment of an ethical environment in which conflict transformation can occur.

As a person committed to the Torah of Nonviolence, I regard war and militarism as corrupting and corrosive to a Jewish way of life. The Torah of Nonviolence represents the legacy within Jewish tradition that prohibits actions that cause intentional harm or public injury. This point of view essentially makes war obsolete. I do not support armed resistance either, although I acknowledge the right of people to armed resistance under occupation, according to international law.

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What is “Palestine” today?

I traveled to Palestine and Israel in June 2010 for two weeks; as I have almost every year for the past 30 years. Since my previous trip to Palestine and Israelin October of 2008, the official policy of systematically containing and decreasing the geographic area inhabited by Palestinian cities, towns, villages, farms, and individual family houses had not diminished. There is not now, nor has there ever been a moratorium on the building of settlements. On the contrary, settlement-building has been the principle method of displacing Palestinians from their traditional lands since 1948, when over 500 Palestinians villages and towns were destroyed and 750,000 people were forcibly removed from their houses and turned into permanent refugees (some families are now in the fourth and fifth generation of refugee status).

Palestinians are indigenous to the region of Palestine and Israel. Some Palestinian families have lived on the land for millennium. Others arrived within the last 300 years.

The massive displacement of millions of Palestinians from their homes is not accidental or haphazard. Since 1967, the construction of over 200 settlements throughout the West Bank has not been carried out in opposition to official state policy; rather, Israel’s settlement policy has always been at the core of Jewish nation-building. The Jewish population in the West Bank grew by 107 percent during the past 12 years (annual report, Ariel University Center of Samaria, December 2008.) Close to 500,000 Israelis now live in the West Bank. As a result of ongoing growth, many Israeli leaders believe (and perhaps always intended) that, in the competing goals of a two-state solution or the establishment of a “Greater Israel,” the latter has unequivocally supplanted the former. Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s “Greater Israel” has already been achieved on the ground.

What remains of “Palestine” is a series of truncated, non-contiguous enclaves, ringed and contained by ever-expanding Israeli settlements. The Palestinian towns of Tulkarim, Qalqilya, Nablus, Jenin, Ramallah, East Jerusalem, Beit Jala, Bethlehem, Beit Sahour, as well as hundreds of villages, including Bilin, Nilin, Jayyous, Walaji and the Tent of Nations farm, Lod, Ramle, Jaffa, Acco, and countless other villages and refugee camps, are all being severely squeezed by encroaching settlement expansion. Natural growth for Israelis means ghetto-like conditions for Palestinians. At present, the Israeli government views over 72% of the West Bank as Israeli state land. Even as I write, that percentage is growing. What will be left of Palestine for the Palestinians?

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Obviously, Palestinian families do not uproot themselves voluntarily. They never have. An elaborate system of forced transfer, deportation, displacement, and containment is deeply entrenched as an acceptable policy throughout the Jewish world. Displacement is carried out with the blunt and brutal weapon of military occupation. The system of enforced containment and displacement includes military actions, use of collaborators, human shields and undercover units, U.S.-funded settler militia, nightly military incursions, mass arrests, administrative detention, hundreds of military orders, Jewish bypass roads, the 400-mile-long separation wall and barrier fence, economic repression, denial of water and food, a system of impossible-to-obtain permits, home destruction, destruction of tens of thousands of olive trees and acres of farmland, prevention of access to health care, destruction of educational infrastructure, the nonexistence of legal recourse, imposed curfew, closure, checkpoints, discriminatory zoning and planning processes, family separation, and torture. People are even prevented from collecting rainwater.

Alongside Palestinian towns and villages, settlements enjoy a level of infrastructure that resembles the American suburbs. Although Israelis legally responsible for the infrastructure of the West Bank, Palestinian infrastructure relies on the largess of the international community. The road to Ramallah dubbed Wadi Ner resembles a roller coaster more than a road. My friend George had to rescue his wife when rain prevented her from driving up the steep, windy slope lacking guardrails. The lack of water in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) is at crisis levels. While Israeli settlements such as Maalei Adumim, Ofra, and hundreds of others enjoy huge community swimming pools and lush grass lawns, throughout the OPT people are thirsty. Palestinian mothers and fathers literally have to make choices between washing and drinking water. During a recent visit to my friend Issa’s family, they went without water for four days. Nonetheless, they offered us coffee. A true gift.

A two-state solution?

My experience is that no one who travels through the OPT today believes a two-state solution will come to pass, no matter how much the majority of Israelis and Palestinians may long for that eventuality. The bottom-line conditions for statehood include viability, territorial integrity, and sovereignty; they are not present, nor are they being developed. People who talk about a two-state solution are in serious denial of facts on the ground.

And then there is Gaza. Security alone cannot explain the scale, intensity, and brutality of the December 2008 Israeli attack, especially since the Hamas ceasefire was still in place. No one knows how many people were actually killed. Estimates run from at least 1,400 to over 2,000. Thousands more were wounded and the entire Palestinian population was scarred with trauma. At least 100,000 people remain homeless and building materials are still banned. Israel has put Gazans “on a diet” that is one-half of the recommended caloric intake, through a system of enforced closure and siege. According to the 2009 Goldstone Report to the United Nations, water systems, schools, hospitals, mosques, sewage treatment centers, universities, homes, farmland, factories, and workshops were targeted for destruction. And, as revealed by Israeli soldiers’ testimonies about their experience in Operation Cast Lead in Gaza — released by an organization called Breaking the Silence, composed of Israeli Defense Forces members and veterans, through a project titled “Soldiers Speak Out” — operational orders jumped from Yitzhak Rabin’s policy of breaking bones to using extreme military force against defenseless civilians, with full permission given to kill anyone deemed a threat. (Carrying a cell phone qualified as a deadly threat.) As Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni stated, the intentional harming of civilians is “simply a normal product of circumstance.” This chilling statement represents a callous attitude toward Palestinian civilians, the kind of attitude that has already led many in the world community, including many Jews, to engage a new and more aggressive strategy of nonviolent resistance. Especially since the Middle East peace process has failed so miserably to stop the targeted destruction of Palestinian society.

As made clear by the recent U.S.Congressional appropriation of $30 billion to Israel over the next ten years, its condemnation of the Goldstone Report, and its support of Israel’s actions toward the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, Israel receives unconditional support from our Congress. Nor did the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s historic renunciation of terrorism and recognition of the State of Israel in 1988, further confirmed in the PLO Declaration of Principles in 1993, yield a Palestinian state. In spite of all the peace plans and processes, life is getting worse for Palestinians.

Everywhere I traveled this June, one felt the direct threat of Israeli land expansion and the accompanying infrastructure of military enforcement. In Jenin, an organic olive oil processing plant goes through monthly tribulations trying to export product to Canada. Bottles are routinely broken or opened and left to ruin by Israeli border authorities. Israelhas not ceased demolishing houses, condemning thousands of people to homelessness and grinding poverty.

The separation wall continues to carve the West Bank into disconnected enclaves. When I traveled with youth from the Public Achievement Program in Ramallah, most of them had never visited another city, except nearby Jericho. Travel is too difficult and dangerous for young Palestinians to drive even two hours north. While Israel copes with the very real fear of suicide bombers (now almost non-existent) and rocket fire, every family in Palestine has face-to-face experience with Israeli brutality. No one is without a story of suffering and severe trauma due to the systematic policy of deportation, transfer, and containment. Death, imprisonment, beating and humiliation, loss of homes, separation of families, and continual stress that results in severe medical conditions impacts every single family in Palestine. And, there is no access to the sea.

Nonetheless, in Israel and the OPT, Palestinian life is largely invisible to most Israelis. The vast majority of Israeli Jews who interact with Palestinians are soldiers, settlers, and government bureaucrats enforcing the system of containment. Yet, Israelis continually characterize the Palestinian community as an existential threat, terrorists, and enemies of Israel, even though Palestinians have virtually no power and no place is safe.

Does any person seriously think that all this can occur without some form of resistance on the part of Palestinians? And, of course, Palestinians are not allowed the avenue of assimilation into a shared national state since Israelis an ethnocracy, which makes a civil rights struggle unacceptable to Israel. The preferred option for Israel is Palestinian accommodation to the current status quo: live in small “autonomous” enclaves. Autonomous of what is the question, since no one can go anywhere.

Palestinians, however, have never accepted the status quo. Instead, they have been resisting ongoing forced displacement for the past 60 years. There has been widespread condemnation of Palestinian armed resistance. As we know, Jewish people took up armed resistance to achieve their goal of statehood. However, the same effort by Palestinians is viewed as illegitimate. Since armed struggle and peace negotiations have failed to yield self-determination, what’s left

Palestinian nonviolence:Sumud andIntifada

“Nonviolence is not only a tool for waging conflict, it is a positive method for social change.” (Mubarak Awad)

“Non-cooperation with the occupation-the refusal to work in the occupied territories, to travel there, to purchase goods produced in Israeli factories there-these are all personal examples of preventive nonviolence.” (Amos Gvirtz, The Escalation of Nonviolence)

“There is no shortage of Palestinian Gandhis in Israel’s jails, at checkpoints, and in refugee camps. There are even Gandhis as young as five years old walking to school holding on to their backpacks, to their pride and to their dignity while they get stoned and showered with settler garbage… The problem is how to make these Gandhis visible to a world blinded by ignorance and by prejudice.” (Samah Sabawi, presentation given at Melbourne University, Australia, on April 30, 2010)

Engaged nonviolence has always played a prominent role in Palestinian civil society’s struggle for human, civil, and national rights. The failure of western media to take notice of nonviolence as a central strategy in the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and human and civil rights does not mean it doesn’t exist. The failure to lift up the movement for active nonviolence in Palestineprevents us from understanding the dynamics of the conflict and seeing the positive resources operating within Palestinian and Israeli society.

Although it is highly controversial, BDS — boycott, divestment, and sanctions — is the most current expression of Palestinian nonviolent resistance. BDS is an outgrowth of two historic movements of Palestinian nonviolence, sumud and intifada. The nonviolent strategy of sumud was created in the aftermath of the June 1967 war (the “six-day” war), when over 250,000 Palestinians fled and several villages and refugee camps were destroyed or emptied. Those who remained created the nonviolent strategy of sumud, steadfastness to the land. Embodied by Palestinian farmers, sumud became the spiritual force behind staying put, especially in light of the original Nakba of 1948.

The concept of sumud was recently highlighted at a conference in May 2010 at the University of Bethlehem called “Sumud and the Wall.” Dr. Waleed Mustafa, associate professor of humanities, defined sumud as “a kind of peaceful resistance, that aims to keep the historical, cultural and psychological connection of the Palestinian people with their homeland. This resistance will not give the Israeli occupation the opportunity to take advantage of their military superiority.” According to many practitioners of nonviolence in Palestinian society, remaining steadfast is an antidote to militarism. As Mustafa commented, “—if you use arms against the Israelis, you give the Israelis the right to use arms. The Palestinians will then be the losers.” By being sumud, the Israeli security argument falls aside, since opponents pose no physical threat.

The concept of intifada appeared in Palestinian society by the end of the 1980s as a more assertive form of sumud. According to Dr. Mary King, a researcher on Palestinian nonviolence, the appearance of intifada resulted from three developments: (1) the growth of the “popular committee movement”; (2) the rejection by activist intellectuals of armed struggle and their advancement of alternative ideas on political compromise and negotiations with Israel; and (3) knowledge and techniques about nonviolence transmitted from movements elsewhere in the world, which began to circulate among Palestinians.

The word intifada expresses an aggressive “shaking off” of occupation, and was chosen precisely because of its nonviolent connotation by students opposing Israeli military orders limiting their access to education. Mubarak Awad describes intifada as “the intention to shake the shame and fear of a people’s occupiers, as well as to build the self-respect, assertiveness and dignity needed to resist occupation.” Awad, founder and director of Nonviolence International, was deported in 1988 from Israel by the Israeli Supreme Court after being jailed for organizing activities involving nonviolent civil disobedience. King’s findings (published in A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance, 2007) demonstrated a growing awareness in the civilian population of Palestinethat “the military command structures of the guerrilla units could not protect Palestinian communities from the repressive violence of military occupation, and they did not generate democratic leadership.”

The intifada nonviolent popular resistance generated many types of noncooperation and constructive peace-building efforts in the OPT including: the tax resistance of Beit Sahour; strikes and sit-ins; the planting of victory gardens; flying the Palestinian flag; refusal to show permits; an emphasis on cultural preservation; and the establishment of medical clinics, women’s organizations, citizen parliaments, schools, and other service-based institutions, all of which are seen as essential for building a democratic society. The boycott of Israeli settlement goods has also been a standard feature of non-cooperation with occupation. Unfortunately, the international press, PLO, Israeli society, and broader international community have all failed to understand the significant and broad scope of intifada as a nonviolent movement within Palestine.

The first intifada helped lead to the Oslo Accords of 1993, which initially offered hope for the establishment of a Palestinian state and a resolution of the conflict. However, faith in Oslo was soon replaced by a feeling of betrayal that resulted from a monumental increase in land appropriation, settlement activity, and military force used against civilians. Palestinian movements for nonviolence then refined their strategies to deal with the new “facts on the ground.”

In 2001, Beit Sahour-based activists from The Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People founded the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in order to cultivate solidarity partnerships with the international community to challenge checkpoints, home demolitions, military bases, Jewish-only roads, and then, increasingly, the separation wall. This period initiated the growth of the international and Israeli-based Palestinian solidarity movement. Solidarity replaced dialogue, since dialogue had not yielded long-term results. The status quo was worsening. Palestinians were requesting on-the-ground help through the methodology of direct action.

“Solidarity work is always collaborative, but it must begin with the needs of the disenfranchised group rather than those of the more privileged. In other words, solidarity initiatives … must focus on the suffering of the occupied rather than on the humanity of the occupier” (Simona Sharoni, Gender and Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1995).

A new framework for understanding the conflict was emerging. Interfaith Peace-Builders (then a program of the Fellowship of Reconciliation), the American Friends Service Committee, and many other organizations sponsored delegations to Palestine and Israel to see the reality for themselves with the intention of building a movement of solidarity activists. Palestinians believed that partnering with internationals on the ground would create a safer environment for nonviolent protest of land confiscation. They were not entirely correct. Since the March 2003 murder of Rachel Corrie, internationals have also been in danger of being severely injured or killed for their actions. In March 2009, Tristan Anderson, a 38-year-old American, was shot in the head by Israel defense forces with a metal high-velocity tear-gas canister. Critically wounded, he has since undergone three brain operations. The murder of Turkish nationals on the May 2010 Gaza Freedom Flotilla was another example of increasing brutality directed against those who resist. Direct nonviolent action continues to be met with lethal force.

BDS: The next phase of solidarity

When the International World Court declared in 2005 the separation barrier to be illegal according to international law, Palestinian civil society was ready for the next phase of the struggle. The call for BDS made on July 9, 2005by 170 Palestinian organizations represented an extension of the popular nonviolent struggle — a strengthening of the work of sumud and intifada as movements that rely on partnerships with the international solidarity community. Clearly, the successful BDS campaign to end South African apartheid had inspired Palestinians, and they continued to redefine their approach to social change away from armed struggle and toward nonviolent direct action.

At this point in the struggle for national, civil, and human rights, Palestinians believe that only through pressure applied by a broad spectrum of civil society — including academic, sports, health care, cultural and religious institutions, labor, business and student groups, and government bodies — will prevent Israel from conducting business as usual. Eventually, Israeli society will be convinced that it is in its best interest to remove the separation wall, negotiate a final settlement for refugees, and dismantle the infrastructure of occupation.

BDS is not an instrument for “final” outcomes. Rather, by focusing on civil society and human rights, BDS tries to create an environment in which a peace process can succeed. No one knows what the “final settlement” will look like: whether it is two states, a bi-national state, or a regional confederation, only Palestinians and Israelis can determine the future together. Meanwhile, solidarity activists are engaged in a human rights struggle according to the principles outline by the Palestinian boycott movement.

BDS is also a rejection of the humanitarian aid approach to the crisis in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. BDS frames the conflict in terms of the structural violence of occupation and land confiscation. Humanitarian aid does not address structural violence and is not a viable long-term solution for Palestinian well-being. Humanitarian aid is only a stop-gap measure to prevent starvation in Gazaor provide a modicum of education for refugees throughout Palestine. In fact, humanitarian aid has perpetuated the status quo of refugee status in this conflict for decades.

BDS is not about partisan politics either. Thousands of Jews are part of the Palestinian solidarity movement. This is the way we have responded to the failure of the peace process and dialogue to move our community to embrace Palestinian rights. Neve Gordan, an Israeli academic, affirms the need for BDS felt by a growing number of Jewish Israeli progressives. Due to the dwindling of the Israeli “peace camp,” the move of Israel’s political conversation to the far right, the forced removal of Palestinians from East Jerusalem, the increasingly brutal response to the nonviolent protests by Palestinian villages resisting the separation wall, and the threat of loyalty oaths and the criminalization of BDS from within, the international community is needed to apply pressure from without. This will also strengthen those in the Jewish Israeli peace community to act with clarity and in solidarity with those in the international community committed to breaking the inhumane siege of Gaza. This does, in fact, seem to be the case.

Some Jews argue that BDS increases the paranoia of Israeli Jews and the Jewish community, and thus we should find other forms of conflict transformation. BDS supporters believe that after 40 years of fruitless negotiations and continued land appropriation, BDS represents the best hope for conflict transformation. When governments and corporations fail to act, then those concerned with human rights take action by using consumer power and public opinion. That is the lesson of nonviolent struggles throughout the world.

BDS advocates see BDS as a form of noncooperation with systematic violence and not as a form of anti-Semitism, in that BDS targets institutions, corporations, and individuals “who profit from or contribute to the Israeli system of occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, or provide products or services that contribute to the construction and maintenance of Israeli settlements, or provide products and services that contribute to or enable violent acts of intentional harm of civilians, to undergo a process of divestment from companies that profit from violence, violate international law and international human rights standards” (Jewish Voice for Peace statement, 2010).

BDS is considered by many in the Jewish community to be a repeat of the German boycott of Jewish shops during the Nazi era, the Arab boycott of Israel, and other acts that single out the Jewish community unfairly and thus raise BDS to the level of anti-Semitism. While there may be some actors who take advantage of BDS as an opportunity for anti-Semitic speech and action, BDS is an effort to end the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and people by calling on those who profit from violence to turn aside.

Some people are most uncomfortable with the academic and cultural boycott of Israel, while accepting some form of boycott from Israeli settlement products. Fine. Take up those aspects of BDS that fall in your comfort level, encourages Hind Awad and other members of the Palestinian Boycott National Committee. However, one cannot easily distinguish between occupation inside the “green line” and the settlements. A careful look at the infrastructure of occupation reveals a deep interconnection between Israeli academic, cultural, business, military, and governmental institutions operating inside the green line and the infrastructure of occupation. From research and development of the mechanism of population control, to the targeting of most Palestinian educational and cultural institutions by military assault, closure, deportation of students, failure to give permits for needed travel, and more, not many inside the green line are outside the mechanism of occupation. Many musicians, actors, business people, journalists, academics, healthcare professionals and those who want to visit family members in Jordan, for instance, cannot obtain permits to travel abroad to pursue their craft or see loved ones. When they do manage to travel, Palestinians are often hassled at the border. Furthermore, Israeli cultural and academic institutions have been mostly silent or complicit in the oppression of Palestinians.

BDS is also a rejection of the highly valued effort of verbal dialogue. Unfortunately, dialogue which does not acknowledge the occupied-and-occupier relationship cannot succeed in undoing the system of structural violence which confines Palestinian life. This is not a time for a “balanced approach” or the assumption of symmetry of oppression. Palestinian alumni of the Seeds of Peace programs (which bring together Middle Eastern youth to create common understanding), for instance, often comment on the widespread failure of Israeli Jews to understand their situation. Dialogue has not deterred the Israelis from entering the army nor has it influenced them to work toward an end to occupation. Rather, dialogue tends to normalize inequality and give comfort to the occupier because they’ve had a face-to-face experience with the other. This is no longer acceptable to the vast majority of Palestinians.

Many claim BDS is not a successful form of creating change. This is patently false. In five years, BDS has become a force to reckon with throughout Europe and North America. The BDS campaign against South Africa’s apartheid government took over 40 years. This is a campaign meant to be waged over decades.

This is not an easy struggle. We are just at the beginning of a new phase of Israeli-Palestinian conflict transformation that is actually a sign of hope. My friend Hisham Sharabati, who initiated “Youth Against the Settlements” in Hebron and is active in Open Shuhada Street, told me this June over a cup of fresh mint tea that BDS and the activism of the current generation of 20-year-olds has taken away the depression he felt after the home invasions of 2002.

I’m in a good mood lately, because people are doing something. Youth in Palestine have taken up the cause of helping their communities make positive change. Palestinians living in Israel have a renewed a potent connection to those in the Occupied Territories. The Palestinian nation is uniting across boundaries. This is the time for nonviolent direct action. We don’t know what the future will bring, but people will never stop resisting injustice. BDS is the best hope for a future that manifests the end of conflict and a return to well-being and peace.

[Ed. Note: We also recommend the recent roundtable published by Tikkun magazine in its July/August 2010 issue, “Is BDS the Way to End the Occupation?” That conversation between Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, Rebecca Vilkomerson (executive director, Jewish Voice for Peace), Maya Wind (an Israeli Sminitsi/ conscientious objector), and Jeremy Ben-Ami (president, J Street), facilitated by Tikkun editor Rabbi Michael Lerner, is an excellent resource for considering the range of views on BDS within the progressive Jewish community.]

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb is cofounder of the Shomer Shalom Network for Jewish Nonviolence. She lives in Stony Point, New York, where she serves as an elder in the new Community of Living Traditions, an interfaith and intergenerational intentional community.