A succession of events starting in Barcelona Spain in February and followed in Liège Belgium and Oslo Norway in April sent a strong message to Israel: The Palestinian Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) is alive and well.
In Barcelona the city’s Mayor cancelled a twinning agreement with the Israeli city of Tel Aviv. The decision was not an impulsive one although Ada Colau is well-known for her principled positions on many issues. It was however an outcome of a fully democratic process initiated by a proposal submitted by left-wing parties at the city council.
A few weeks after the decision was made specifically on 8 February a pro-Israeli legal organization known as The Lawfare Project announced its intentions to file a lawsuit against Colau because she supposedly “acted beyond the scope of her authority”.
The Lawfare Project meant to communicate a message to other city councils in Spain and the rest of Europe that there will be serious legal repercussions to boycotting Israel. To the organization’s – and Israel’s – big surprise however other cities quickly advanced their own boycott procedures. They include the Belgian city of Liège and Norway’s capital city Oslo.
Liège’s local leadership did not try to conceal the reasons behind their decision. The city council it was reported had decided to suspend relations with the Israeli authorities for running a regime “of apartheid colonization and military occupation”. That move was backed by a majority vote at the council proving once more that the pro-Palestinian moral stance was fully compliant with a democratic process.
Oslo is a particularly interesting case. It was there that the ‘peace process’ resulted in the Oslo Accords in 1993 which ultimately divided the Palestinians while giving Israel a political cover to continue with its illegal practices while claiming that it has no peace partner.
But Oslo is no longer committed to the empty slogans of the past. In June 2022 the Norwegian government declared its intention of denying the label “Made in Israel” to goods produced in illegal Israeli Jewish settlements in Occupied Palestine.
Though Jewish settlements are illegal under international law Europe did not mind doing business – in fact lucrative business – with these colonies over the years. In November 2019 the European Court of Justice however resolved that all goods produced in “Israel-occupied areas” had to be labelled as such so as not to mislead consumers. The Court’s decision was a watered-down version of what Palestinians had expected: a complete boycott if not of Israel as a whole at least of its illegal settlements.
However the decision still served a purpose. It provided yet another legal base for boycott thus empowering pro-Palestine civil society organizations and reminding Israel that its influence in Europe is not as limitless as Tel Aviv wants to believe.
The most that Israel could do in response is to issue angry statements along with haphazard accusations of anti-Semitism. In August 2022 Norwegian Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt requested a meeting with then-Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid during the former’s visit to Israel. Lapid refused. Not only did such arrogance make a little difference in Norway’s stance on the Israeli occupation of Palestine but it also opened yet more margins for pro-Palestinian activists to be more proactive leading to Oslo’s decision in April to ban imports of goods made in illegal settlements.
The BDS movement explained on its website the meaning of Oslo’s decision: “Norway’s capital … announced that it will not trade in goods and services produced in areas that are illegally occupied in violation of international law.” In practice this means that Oslo’s “procurement policy will exclude companies that directly or indirectly contribute to Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise – a war crime under international law.”
Keeping these rapid developments in mind The Lawfare Project would now have to expand its legal cases to include Liège Oslo and an ever-growing list of city councils that are actively boycotting Israel. But even then there are no guarantees that the outcome of such litigations will serve Israel in any way. In fact the opposite is more likely to be true.
A case in point was the recent decision by the cities of Frankfurt and Munich in Germany to cancel music concerts of pro-Palestinian rock and roll legend Roger Waters as part of his ‘This is Not a Drill’ tour. Frankfurt justified its decision by branding Waters as “one of the world’s most well-known anti-Semites”. The bizarre and unfounded claim was rejected outright by a German civil court which on 24 April ruled in favor of Waters.
Indeed while a growing number of European cities are siding with Palestine those who side with Israeli apartheid find it difficult to defend or even maintain their position simply because the former predicate their stances on international law while the latter on twisted and convenient interpretations of anti-Semitism.
In an article published in Foreign Policy magazine last May Steven Cook reached a hasty conclusion that the BDS movement “has already lost” because according to his inference efforts to boycott Israel have made no impact “in the halls of government”.
While BDS is a political movement that is subject to miscalculations and mistakes it is also a grassroots campaign that labors to achieve political ends through incremental measured changes. To succeed over time such campaigns must first engage ordinary people on the street activists at universities in houses of worship etc. all done through calculated long-term strategies themselves devised by local and national civil society collectives and organizations.
BDS continues to be a success story and the latest critical decisions made in Spain Belgium and Norway attest to the fact that grassroots efforts do pay dividends.
There is no denying that the road ahead is long and arduous. It will certainly have its twists turns and yes occasional setbacks. But this is the nature of national liberation struggles. They often come at a high cost and great sacrifice. But with popular resistance at home and growing international support and solidarity abroad Palestinian freedom should in fact be possible.
– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of the Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is ‘These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons’. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) and also at the Afro-Middle East Center (AMEC).
