BDS is counter-productive. We need to crack down on Israeli settlements instead
The Biden administration is clearly exasperated with the Netanyahu regime in Israel. Netanyahu’s farright stance is upending regional interests, and creating a chaotic hellscape in Gaza, without a viable solution to prevent another horrific attack by Hamas on Israeli citizens or stop the attacks coming from Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel needs viable state partners. So do the Palestinians, and so does the world.
Last week, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, announced that the United States has overturned Trump-era policies and returned to the longstanding US foreign policy that views Israeli settlements in the West Bank as “inconsistent with international law”.
This clarification needs to be put into action. The US needs to see a twostate reality emerge from the horrific rubble of the war between Israel and Hamas, and Joe Biden can – and must – do more to react to Netanyahu’s intransigence. One of the most important steps is continuing to isolate the Israeli settlements politically and draw lines between the settlements and Israel proper.
Here’s a short list of steps the Biden administration can begin taking immediately: label goods manufactured in the settlements as coming from the occupied territories, not from Israel. Stop funding any binational research from institutions inside the settlements, including Ariel University. Treat settlers differently from Israeli citizens when they apply for the new US visa waiver program that will offer automatic visas to Israeli citizens. Scrutinize US-based non-profits that raise money for the settlements through existing IRS laws. If an Israeli company based in the occupied territories wants to apply for a US patent, don’t allow it to be labeled as from Israel.
Here are more: demand from Israel strong policing of any settler violence and ramifications for violence against Palestinian civilians. Condition aid on a percentage of what Israel uses to build any new settlements or housing in settlements. Make clear that the US is watching the actions of Israel’s racist and fascist minister of homeland security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, as he seeks to remake Israel’s police and prison guards in his own image – turning water cannons on families of hostages who are protesting in the streets for their loved ones’ return as well as placing Palestinian prisoners in dangerous isolation and deprivation cells without recourse.
The Biden administration also needs to take steps to strengthen the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people. First, the US can demand that Israel negotiate with and deal with the Palestinian Authority (PA), with whom Israel, after all, signed an agreement based on the Oslo accords, especially when it comes to planning and negotiating any scenarios for the “day after” the Israel-Hamas war.
This has to include Israel transferring Palestinian tax funds that Israel legally collects as per the Oslo-related Paris protocol, not holding back the funds as the Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich – a settler leader himself – has demanded, or maneuvering a third-party transfer, as recently happened via Norway.
The US should help ease the PA’s incumbent president, Mahmoud Abbas, into a ceremonial position and bring more technical expertise into the PA leadership. This is especially important because the PA appears to be creating a new, more technocratic government, perhaps with either Mohammed Mustafa or Salam Fayyad – both respected economists – as prime minister. A new government may be able to revitalize the PA and chart a new path forward.
The US could host a regional conference – with Israel and the PA as participants – that would talk about a regional future that integrates Israel into the region only if there is a viable Palestinian state, too.
Here in the US, it would be important to reopen the Palestinian mission that was shuttered by Trump. This might be more difficult since it would need congressional approval, but figuring out any symbolic way to move this forward without Congress would be helpful. Similarly, reopening the US consulate that was shuttered in Jerusalem and had served the Palestinian community outside of the protocols of the US embassy to Israel would be equally important – but also difficult, due to resistance from the current Israeli government, and so would need some creative diplomatic thinking to create a visible presence there.
Like Biden, progressives in the US and across the world need to differentiate between the state of Israel within the “green line”, the internationally recognized 1967 borders, and the occupied Palestinian territories – from which a viable Palestinian state must emerge. The myopic idea that Israel will disappear or morph into a state in which Jews are the minority is not realistic – or moral – and it won’t offer a lifeline to the very Palestinians whom protesters claim to want to protect. Ignoring the Israeli left and promoting boycott, divestment and sanction (BDS) campaigns that are often aimed precisely at the opponents of the occupation – for instance, artists and those in academia – is counterproductive at the least, harmful at the most.
The real beneficiary of the BDS campaign since its inception has been the Israeli right. BDS has had close to zero effect on the Israeli economy. Indeed, the only issues that caused downgrading of the Israeli financial markets was the Netanyahu-inspired judicial coup attempt of 2023 and now the war with Hamas.
Besides, even the staunchest BDS supporters probably violate their own declarations – especially if they use any of numerous technologies and technology companies from Israel, including Wix, Mobileye (which is in most US-manufactured cars now), a USB flash drive, Waze (now owned by Google Maps), many computer firewalls, Nvidia AI (which just purchased Israeli Mellanox Technologies) and more.
Many of the creators and investors behind these technologies are also leaders in the huge protests against Netanyahu and his government. Key tech leaders have also worked with the Palestinian tech sector in the occupied territories and in Gaza. While the
protests are more centered on Israeli domestic issues than the occupation, there is an effort by the nascent Israeli left to change that.
The Israeli left is struggling and diverse. It is Jewish and Arab, Zionist and non-Zionist. But it – along with a politically engaged centrist population – is core to the Palestinians’ future, as well as that of Israelis. There is a sophisticated and dedicated human and civil rights sector that works inside Israel and with Gaza and the occupied territories and is challenged on a daily basis by the Netanyahu government. It is to these people that both Biden and progressives should be speaking.
Differentiating Israel proper from the settlements and occupied territories will clarify this – both in terms of international policies and in building progressive alliances. Only by dealing with politics and people as they exist can change happen.
Jo-Ann Mort writes frequently about Israel/Palestine for a range of publications. She is the co-author of Our Hearts Invented a Place: Can Kibbutzim Survive in Today’s Israel?
will bomb and kill Ukrainians. And the most you can do in response? Be deeply concerned.
I remember the day so well, 17 January 2021, when Navalny returned to Russia. How we went to the airport, how we later tried to get to the Kremlin, how we were detained, how people around us were beaten and their Covid masks ripped off. How those white masks with blood spatters lay in the dirty snow. And how this demonstration turned into a cluster of criminal cases, a wide variety of people, including myself, becoming the accused.
The time for onlookers to be “deeply concerned” is over. Deep concern is not enough. Asking for a full investigation into the circumstances of Navalny’s death is not enough. Calls to release political prisoners are not enough. We need action.
A war is happening. But even talking of the “war” can lead to a prison term because of Russia’s military censorship. During two years of full-scale war, not a single person who has spoken out against the war, who has spoken out against Putin, has been exchanged in a prisoner swap with the west. Alexei Gorinov, an opposition councillor who was one of the first to be sentenced under the new rules about criticising the war in Ukraine, is still in prison. So are Ilya Yashin,
Aleksandra Skochilenko, Bogdan Ziza, Artyom Kamardin, Alexei Moskalev, Evgenia Berkovich, Svetlana Petriychuk and many others. Earlier this month, UK ministers ruled out a prisoner swap for the opposition figure Vladimir KaraMurza, despite fears for his life growing after Navalny’s death. Navalny himself was due to be sent to Germany in a swap prior to his murder, according to his ally Maria Pevchikh.
Since 24 February 2022 there have been 19,855 arrests for an anti-war stance; 8,526 cases of “discrediting the army” and “false information”; 835 people imprisoned for an anti-war position. Over these years, many more have passed through this repressive regime. Some did not survive, some took their own lives after their release, and some went to fight – to stop Putin from seizing new territories and turning them into torturous meat grinders, into gulags.
People ask me who will act as opposition in Russia now that Navalny is dead. The burden is placed on those left in Russia to figure out how to get rid of Putin under conditions of military censorship – conditions in which Russians who speak out against this war, against Putin, are imprisoned, tortured and killed. Meanwhile, in the midst of war in 2023, EU countries bought 40% more Russian gas than in the prewar period. In January, Apple paid a 1.18bn rouble (£10.02m) antitrust fine into Russia’s state budget. This month, a man came to Russia from the US to interview Putin, and to shoot a video about the clean Moscow Metro and the admirable lack of homeless people in the city. Do you know what else tends to get cleaned in Russia, Tucker Carlson? The cameras after one of Putin’s executions.
I am often asked what future awaits Russia. A man who brought flowers in memory of Navalny had a gun put to his head and was asked where he bought the flowers, who did Crimea belong to, and if he was gay. This happened in Surgut in Siberia – and we don’t even know what is happening to people in the occupied territories.
When Navalny was murdered many people in Russia felt their hope had died with him. Therefore it is vital that we support Yulia Navalnaya, who announced that she would continue fighting for her husband’s cause. She asked us not only to share in her grief, but in her anger.
If evil is not stopped in time, it flourishes. To have a Russia without Putin, we need to stop him together. We all build the future, every day. The people of Russia don’t demand that people in the west sacrifice their lives as Navalny did; we ask that you save the lives of the people who are left. We ask you to fight with us for those who are in prison for telling the truth. To stop buying Russian commodities such as oil and gas – they are fuel for future murders. Give Ukraine as many weapons as it needs, otherwise this vile and cowardly war will continue to grow, destroying all that is alive in the occupied territories. And unite! We call for you to unite. Putin has found allies in North Korea and Iran and this coalition of totalitarian regimes is dangerous for everyone – not just Ukraine.
To overcome Russia, we need to work together, not be silent and not be afraid. And we should do it in memory of those who gave their lives in the fight against this evil.
Masha Alekhina is a Pussy Riot activist
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the ability to literally cut off Israel’s supply of bombs – to force Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire, what could Biden do with a magic wand?
Rather than using its influence over Netanyahu, the Biden administration instead is trying to show Americans that he is exasperated with Netanyahu, and close to some kind of “breach” with him over Gaza. Over the past few weeks, anonymous US officials leaked a version of this story to the Washington Post, the New York Times and NBC News.
NBC’s report is the most colorful of this recent round of leaks, claiming Biden called Netanyahu an “asshole” at least three times. “He just feels like this is enough,” one of the anonymous sources told NBC. “It has to stop.”
These leaks – and the entire narrative of a US “breach” with Netanyahu – are a smokescreen since Biden refuses to use his leverage to stop the war, either by stopping weapons shipments to Israel or allowing a UN ceasefire resolution to pass without a US veto. And these leaks make Biden look weaker and help enhance Netanyahu’s position in Israel, showing that he can stand up to the US president. Biden and his aides have put themselves in the position of seeming helpless to stop Netanyahu. The best the US administration can do is wag its finger at the Israeli premier, as if he’s some kind of petulant child.
As Biden dithers, Palestinians are dying in large numbers under Israeli attacks, destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system, and mass starvation. The death toll in Gaza is set to surpass 30,000 people, two-thirds of them women and children. Two days after the US veto at the security council, medical officials and human rights advocates provided the UN body with excruciating details on the collapse in Gaza – and direct US responsibility for the continued slaughter.
“There is no health system to speak of left in Gaza. Israel’s military has dismantled hospital after hospital. What remains is so little in the face of such carnage,” Christopher Lockyear, secretary general of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), told the security council on 22 February. He went on to detail that his group’s surgeons were running out of basic gauze to stop patients from bleeding out, and they have had no choice but to carry out amputations without anesthesia on children.
“We have watched members of this council deliberate and delay while civilians die,” Lockyear said, singling out the US for using its veto three times since October to quash a ceasefire resolution.
On 23 February, a group of UN experts declared that continued weapons shipments to Israel, which would be used in Gaza, are likely to violate international law and western states should immediately stop these transfers. The advice came after a Dutch appeals court ordered the Netherlands government earlier this month to halt the export of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel, saying there was “clear risk” the equipment would be used to violate international humanitarian law.
But that advice is falling on deaf ears in Washington, as did many previous warnings that the US is violating international law and could eventually be found complicit in war crimes or even genocide, because of its unwavering support and weapons shipments to Israel.
While Biden complains about the petulant Israeli leader who won’t listen, his presidency is now at risk. It’s a selfinflicted wound that Biden could have avoided by standing up to Netanyahu months ago.
Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor at New York University