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The PA's disingenuous boycott campaign
By Ali Abunimah
The Electronic Intifada
In recent weeks, the US- and Israeli-backed Ramallah-based
Palestinian Authority (PA) has made a show of calling on
Palestinians to boycott goods manufactured in Israeli
settlements in the West Bank.
Despite the rhetoric of defiance and resistance, and
exaggerated screams of anguish from Israeli settler
groups, the PA effort actually appears designed to co-opt,
undermine and abort the much broader Palestinian civil
society campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions
(BDS), and to reassure Israel of the continued docility
and collaboration of its puppet regime in Ramallah.
As part of his daily routine of publicity stunts, unelected
Ramallah-based "Prime Minister" Salam Fayyad has been seen
tossing bundles of settler-produced goods onto bonfires.
As for PA "President" Mahmoud Abbas, he recently signed
the "Karama" (dignity) Pledge -- promising not to allow
settlement goods into his house and encouraging others to
do the same. PA volunteers have been going door-to-door in
the occupied West Bank to distribute lists of settler-made
consumer goods that should be avoided.
So far, all well and good. Palestinians and those in
solidarity with them should absolutely boycott Israeli
products. Since 2005, hundreds of Palestinian organizations
endorsed an appeal which "call[s] upon international civil
society organizations and people of conscience all over
the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment
initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to
South Africa in the apartheid era" ("Palestinian Call for
Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS)," 9 July 2005).
The BDS movement has seen activists all over the world
calling -- with increasing success -- on companies to
cease doing business in Israel, to stop selling Israeli
products, for international performers not to perform in
Israel, for academics to refuse cooperation with Israeli
institutions and for cultural institutions to boycott
Israeli government-sponsored events aimed at prettifying
Israel's apartheid practices.
Recently, dozens of Palestinian youth organizations,
independent as well as aligned with virtually every
political faction, inside and outside historic Palestine,
issued a joint call under the title "Palestinian youth
united against normalization with Israel." The youth
"declare our rejection of normalization with Israel on
all levels" -- economic, political, cultural and
institutional -- and their adherence to the principles of
the Palestinian independent Boycott National Committee
which steers the BDS movement ("Palestinian youth united
against normalization with Israel," 28 April 2010).
BDS represents the broad consensus of Palestinian society,
but the PA settlement boycott campaign actually violates
and calls on people to defy the BDS call. During a photo
opportunity where he affixed a sticker to the door of his
house attesting that it was free of settlement goods,
Abbas emphasized, "We are not boycotting Israel, because
we have agreements and imports from it."
Similarly the official PA website for the ironically-named
"Karama Pledge" states: "Regarding trade with Israel, the
Palestinian Ministry of Economy confirms continuing its
cooperation as it was agreed at the [1994] Paris summit"
(http://karama.ps).
All of this is no doubt under the rubric of the PA's famous
"adherence to signed agreements" dictated by the Quartet
(the US, EU, Russia and the UN). But the PA website even
acknowledges that Israel itself does not abide by agree-
ments and that "Israel forbids any of our products from
reaching its markets. In addition, Israel places many
obstacles that face Palestinian products waiting to be
exported to foreign countries... Israel is even denying
Palestinian rights which were agreed in the Paris agree-
ment."
The PA's insistence on abiding by agreements Israel
constantly violates is further evidence -- if it were
needed -- of the PA's terminal subservience. Given this
reality, the main purpose of its campaign is actually to
undermine both the methods and goals of the growing grass-
roots BDS movement and to preach to Palestinians that they
must and should do business with Israel and allow Israeli
goods in their markets and cooperate and normalize with
Israel unconditionally.
The 2005 Palestinian BDS call states that "nonviolent
punitive measures should be maintained" until Israel meets
all its obligations to Palestinian rights and international
law, specifically: ending its occupation and colonization
of all Arab land and dismantling the apartheid wall;
recognizing the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel
to full equality; and respecting, protecting and promoting
the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their
homes. The PA campaign, by contrast, makes no mention of
these goals whatsoever, focusing narrowly on settlements
-- but even this is an empty commitment.
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As part of the PA's hasbara campaign, Abbas issued a decree
threatening large fines and terms of imprisonment up to six
years for those who deal in or import settlement goods into
the West Bank. Notably this decree does not impose any
penalties on Palestinian businessmen who sell goods and
provide services to the settlers. In recent years credible
allegations have repeatedly surfaced that a number of
senior PA and Fatah officials, including most notoriously
former PA Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, and their family
members have grown rich from selling cement to Israel for
construction of settlements and the apartheid wall (or
acting as brokers to import cement from Egypt on behalf of
Israeli companies). Despite repeated promises that the PA
attorney-general would investigate and prosecute such
violations nothing has ever happened. Unsurprisingly,
Abbas and Fayyad -- despite their new found anti-settle-
ment zeal -- still seem uninterested in investigating PA
complicity.
While undermining BDS is probably the main aim of the bogus
PA campaign it is likely not the only one. The Abbas/Fayyad
regime lacks any legal, political or democratic legitimacy.
It invested all its efforts into the endless and pointless
US-sponsored "peace process" that has made Palestinians
worse off by every possible measure. In recent years,
independent grassroots campaigns have taken off, including
BDS and the popular nonviolent struggles against the West
Bank wall and settlements. But just as Yasser Arafat's
Palestine Liberation Organization was surprised and alarmed
by the outbreak of the first Palestinian intifada in 1987
and moved quickly to try to control and co-opt it, the PA
leadership is attempting to do exactly the same now. The
PA is not just attempting undermine the independent BDS
and grassroots campaigns, but to co-opt them precisely
because of their growing power, popularity and legitimacy
as liberation strategies, in the hope that some of that
legitimacy will rub off on the Ramallah regime.
The Electronic Intifada previously reported on the PA's
middle-of-the-night arrest of Mousa Abu Maria, co-
coordinator of the grassroots Palestine Solidarity Project
in the occupied West Bank village of Beit Ommar.
Abu Maria, as reported in The Economist, sees the PA's
sudden interest in popular nonviolent resistance as "a
veiled bid by Mr. Fayyad to gain control of an independent
grassroots movement and to turn the drive for a Palestinian
state into a cause without rebels" ("Can Palestinians
peacefully build a state?," 20 May 2010). More generally,
US-trained PA paramilitaries continue their harsh crack-
down on any sort of independent activism and organizing
in the occupied West Bank.
Consider too the irony that the PA has launched its
campaign against the settlements at precisely the moment
it is engaged in US-brokered "proximity talks" with
Israel. The PA had previously vowed not to return to any
sort of negotiations until Israel halted all settlement
construction throughout the West Bank including occupied
Jerusalem. Israel defied requests from US President Barack
Obama to stop construction, but instead of standing up to
Israel, the Americans pressured the PA to return to
negotiations without any conditions or guarantees.
Thus the settlement boycott acts as a cover for the abject
weakness of the PA to stick to even its most modest
promises, let alone extract real concessions from Israel
or its American sponsors during negotiations. Equally
clear, it is a diversion. According to numerous reports,
Israelis and Palestinians agreed in principle during the
proximity talks on a "land swap." This is not new; it has
long been a peace process industry article of faith that
in a two-state solution Israel would remove only token
settlements while the vast majority, especially those
in and around occupied Jerusalem which house at least
80 percent of the settlers, would be annexed to Israel.
In exchange for receiving East Jerusalem and large parts
of the West Bank, Israel would give the Palestinians some
sand dunes near Gaza (the so-called Halutza Sands) and
some remote barren hills south of Hebron.
So while the Ramallah leaders -- who have no mandate or
authority from the Palestinian people whether under the
PA or the Palestine Liberation Organization to negotiate
on their behalf -- make a show of boycotting settlement
goods, their actual agenda is to promote economic normal-
ization, undermine BDS and legitimize the settlements
through "negotiations."
Where the PA does remain firmly committed to boycott is in
its support for Israel's total blockade and siege of the
Palestinian people in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip.
Despite occasional lip service to ending the blockade,
Ramallah PA leaders always stress that it should end only
according to the terms dictated by the Quartet: that the
US- and Israeli-backed PA militias should return to Gaza
to police and repress the Palestinians there on behalf of
Israel just as they are doing in the West Bank.
The PA in Ramallah has, notably, offered no support to the
courageous international flotilla currently en route to
Gaza in another attempt to break the blockade amid threats
of violence from Israel. Why has the PA not called on its
"friends" and benefactors in the "international community"
to send their navies to protect this peaceful, nonviolent
flotilla and ensure it gets through to Gaza? In practice,
PA policy amounts to full support for the siege.
Some people have been impressed by the PA's anti-settlement
campaign considering it a "step in the right direction."
But no one should be fooled. Palestinians and their allies
should remain clearly focused on the simple truth that
those who continue to coordinate with the Israeli occup-
ation forces to hunt down Palestinians by night cannot don
the mantle of popular resistance by day.
------------------------------------------------------------
Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and
author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-
Palestinian Impasse.
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