The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies hosted an academic conference focused on “Boycott as a Strategy to Counter Israel’s Occupation and Apartheid: Present-day Realities and Aspirations” in Hammemet, Tunisia on 4-6 August 2016. The meeting brought together academics from across the Arab region and the wider world to discuss global efforts to boycott within a broad context of Palestinian national resistance.
In his opening remarks to the conference, Dr. Mehdi Mabrouk—Head of the Tunis Office of the ACRPS—pointed out that the gathering coincided with the 70th anniversary of the first official declaration of a boycott of Israel by the Arab League. As time went on, however, the frailty of the Arab order and its inability to implement its writ became increasingly evident, said Mabrouk. Making matters worse was the disarray of the Arab political elite when facing the dual challenges presented by both domestic fanaticism and increased antipathy from the West. The cumulative effect was negative for the future of the Palestinian cause.
Mabrouk went on to highlight the ACRPS’ commitment to academic scholarship which furthers the Palestinian cause for greater rights. In this sense, added Mabrouk, the ACRPS’ conference was an affirmation both of the dynamism of the politically plural and non-partisan movement to boycott Israel and of the Palestinian people’s right to defend itself and strive for national liberation.
The first panel discussion was given over to discussing the integration of the global boycott movement within the Palestinian strategy for national liberation. The first speaker on this panel was Palestinian academic Michel Nawfal. Nawfal pointed out that the European publics were largely more receptive to Palestinian demands for a boycott of Israel than the state bureaucracies. Nawfal singled out the two symbolically important cases of the United Kingdom and Germany, where the grassroots was more vigorous in its demands for a boycott of Israel than the governments. Nawfal then moved on to contrasting these two situations to the experience within the United States in which counter-boycott efforts ultimately won the upper hand. Despite measures taken by the Israeli authorities, said Nawfal, activists within the global campaign to boycott Israel did have remarkable success in persuading large sections of the global public of the criminality of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. So successful were these efforts that the Israeli government has been compelled to launch its own anti-boycott initiatives to defend itself to world public opinion.
Also speaking on the first day of the three-day event was ACRPS researcher Ayat Hamdan, whose intervention was titled “The Boycott of Israel Within Palestine: Challenges and Context”. Hamdan explained to the participants of the conference that the lack of a coherent Palestinian national strategy hindered any possible successes of the global movement to boycott Israel. Without political backing, said Ayat, it would be difficult for the Boycott National Committee to achieve its goals. Hamdan made a connection between this failure to support boycott as part of a wider Palestinian political strategy, and the peculiar form of settler colonialism to which the Palestinian territories are subject in the political climate shaped by the Oslo Peace Accords. This explained, said the scholar, why it is that Palestinian boycott efforts lagged behind even as global initiatives made impressive strides over the previous decade.
Khalil Jahshan, a Palestinian scholar resident at the Arab Center Washington DC also addressed the first day of the meetings. Jahshan’s paper, titled “A Strategic Adjustment to Sustain the Success of the BDS Movement” (the abbreviation of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, one of the global drivers of the boycott of Israel), was an invitation to face the challenge posed by Israeli government campaigns to counter the boycott. Jahshan suggested that these campaigns necessitated a reexamination of the tactics used by boycott activists, particularly with regards to the American public. Jahshan suggested that such a reevaluation was vital to ensuring the sustainability and continued effectiveness of boycott campaigns across the world. “It won’t be enough to repeatedly shout that Israel is incapable of defeating the worldwide BDS movement … [the campaign] needs to capitalize on its efforts”.
Amani Senwar later addressed the same meeting where she delivered a paper titled “Labelling Settlement Goods in Europe: Political and Economic Aspects”. Senwar’s research involved an examination of the 2012 decision by the European Parliament to label all goods produced in Israeli settlements on the occupied Palestinian West Bank. The move by the EU legislature was, as Senwar pointed out, a further statement by the Europeans that they would not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Palestinian territories. Developments across the Middle East, said the speaker, served to drive a wedge between Europe and Israel, despite the close, historical relations which bind the two sides. Senwar called on leading decision makers in the Arab world to adopt more stringent standards with regards to the boycott of Israel, and to “actualize their rhetoric” on that topic.
In a similar vein, Tarek Hamoud presented his paper titled “The Procedural Boycott in Europe: Total Support for Israel, a Half-hearted Boycott of the Settlements”. Hamoud described the European movement to boycott Israel as having distinct aspects: legal, rights-based and moral. These three types of demands were pushed forward by similarly distinct camps: one based in the grassroots and another rooted in the official institutions. Said Hamoud, “a careful reading of official European measures adopted towards Israel reveals a sharp divide between the legal and moral [obligations] on the one hand and procedural actions taken, on the other: in the latter, Israel is accepted as a fully legitimate political regime which enjoys supra-political support, and as a democracy deserving of support”.
The third and final day of sessions at the conference, included a panel titled “Boycott Campaigns across the Globe: Case Studies”, addressed by conference participants from Malaysia, Australia and Chile.
The first speaker to address that session was Malaysian scholar Mohammed Nazeri Ismail, whose paper was titled “Current Challenges Facing BDS Malaysia”. Ismail highlighted how in Malaysia—a country which has no relations with Israel—government officials are somewhat wary of the wide-scale public enthusiasm for the boycott of Israel. This was due, partly, to the prospective negative repercussions for the Malaysian economy if Malaysian BDS activists succeed in their demands to have all companies which have commercial relations with Israel banned from the country, which would include a number of US companies with massive investments in Malaysia. Meanwhile, massive popular support for the boycott of Israel among Malaysians was driven by the increases in Israeli attacks on the civilian Palestinian population and the expanded scope of settlement activity in the occupied Palestinian Territories.
Emboldened Israeli attacks against Palestinians precipitated the formation of a number Malaysian civil society groups aimed at enforcing a wider boycott of Israeli companies. Commenting on the tasks ahead for these groups, Ismail commented that “one of the biggest challenges which Malaysian boycott activists face is the increasingly negative perception of the Arab states among Malaysians who often ask ‘why should we boycott Israel if the Arab countries won’t?’”. According to Ismail, increasing numbers of Malaysian opinion formers were posing the question of what alternatives there were to boycotting Israel, given the potential economic fallout from a continued boycott of Israel. This was made more pressing by the difficult economic circumstances faced by everyday Malaysians, who are dealing with unprecedented levels of consumer debt.
From the other side of the globe, Palestinian-Chilean scholar Kamal Cumsille delivered his talk titled “The BDS movement in Chile: Brief Story and Challenges”. Cumsille pointed out that Chile’s large Palestinian community was the country’s channel to the wider Arab world. One result of this was that activism rooted within the Chilean Levantine communities was more impactful than boycott calls from broader Chilean civil society which had been subject to massive pressure by pro-Israeli groups rooted in the Chilean Jewish community.
Says Cumsille, Israel boycott campaigns took increasingly firm shape in Chile beginning in 2006,following Israel’s aggressions against both Lebanon and the Gaza Strip that year. Those events, the Chilean writer said, were a turning point in persuading large sections of the Chilean public that Israeli attitudes towards the Palestinians were born of racist ideologies. One tangible outcome of this shift in Chilean opinion on the Palestinian struggle and Israeli treatment of Palestinians was felt in university campuses. Specifically, this was brought to life when the students of the University of Chile Law School in Santiago voted, with a 64% majority, to boycott cooperation with Israeli institutions and academics. Cumsille points out that the Rector of the University of Chile agreed to abide by the students’ ruling, overcoming objections by other students groups who opposed its implementation. The next aim for Chile’s BDS community, said Cumsille, was to persuade Chilean civil society of the morality of supporting pro-Palestinian campaigns, and of the political, cultural and economic dividends to be gained by supporting Palestinian rights through a boycott of Israel.
The next speaker on the last day's first session was Australian philosopher Peter Szelak, whose paper was titled “BDS in Australia: Case studies of popular political protest” and which addressed the question of pro-Israeli domination of the public sphere in the country, which made it difficult for pro-Palestinian groups to gain traction among Australians. Nonetheless, said Szelak, a number of Palestinian solidarity groups, including some which were dedicated to the BDS movement, from springing up in some of the major cities like Sydney and Melbourne. Within the Australian academe, university lecturers have also been successful in heightening awareness of Israeli crimes against the Palestinians (a network of French-Australian academics was singled out by Szelak for furthering this cause). Similarly to the situation in Chile, Szelak pointed out the effect of pro-Israeli lobbying groups in the country in thwarting attempts at building support for the Palestinians. The solution, said the University of New South Wales lecturer, was for greater, more concerted
The participants at the final day of the meeting congressed for a roundtable discussion intended to cover the main themes presented throughout the three days of the meeting. One part of the discussion which shined through the roundtable discussions was the prospective effectiveness of a disciplined and organized BDS movement across the Arab region. Not only would such a movement have significant symbolic value for the Palestinian cause, but it would likely be measurably more impactful from an economic perspective: while the captive Palestinian population living in the Occupied Territories consumes an estimated $1 billion of Israeli goods and services per year, other Arab countries consume between four and five times that amount. In other words, there remained a long way to go for public engagement for a boycott of Israel in the Arab world.
