About a year ago I left the foreign ministry after 36 years of diplomatic work. I left for political reasons: I felt that I could no longer faithfully represent a government striving to achieve political ends that I viewed as unrealistic and immoral, a government intent on abandoning the goal of ending the occupation by coming to an arrangement based on “two states for two nations.”
The day after my resignation I joined those demonstrating solidarity with the residents of the Arab Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood who were forcefully removed from their homes to vacate them for Jewish settlers. This solidarity movement expressed the joint protest of Palestinians and Israelis and intensified pressure on the State of Israel in the local court houses as well as in the international arena. This was a non-violent, joint protest based on solidarity that crossed national lines — solidarity that should be encouraged to achieve joint objectives. Another example is the regular weekly demonstrations near the separation barrier in Bili’in that were transformed into a powerful joint narrative. The decision of the High Court of Justice to instruct the IDF to change the delineation of the fence to the benefit of the village residents and the implementation of the decision represent an important moral victory for the Palestinian side of the conflict.
On the other hand, the dimensions of the Palestinian initiative for a global boycott on Israel (Boycott, Divestment and International Sanctions, or BDS) are becoming clearer day by day. They are doing this in an attempt to balance out Jerusalem’s advantages in the political arena and its success in preserving the “zero-movement” situation in the political/diplomatic arena while systematically eroding the chances for achieving peace based on “two states for two nations.”
The Palestinian hope is to generate an extensive boycott of Israeli products, of consumers of Israeli culture, of Israel’s academic reputation, and of Israeli society in general. All this, under the rubric of a non-violent struggle against the occupation, aims to de-legitimize Israel politically and morally in the eyes of the world as an occupying state.
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