The BDS Call

On 9 July 2005 — one year to the day after the International Court of Justice found Israel’s wall in the occupied territories illegal — more than 170 Palestinian political parties, unions, associations, coalitions, and organizations, representing refugees, Palestinians under occupation, and Palestinian citizens of Israel, issued a joint call: “We, representatives of Palestinian civil society, call 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.”

The call named three demands, each anchored in international law: ending the occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the wall; recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and respecting, protecting, and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194. The three demands deliberately spanned the three fragments of the Palestinian people — the occupied, the citizens of Israel, and the refugees — that two decades of negotiations had treated separately or not at all.

The call built a movement designed to need no leader and no capital: a nonviolent campaign of pressure modeled explicitly on the anti-apartheid struggle, coordinated by the BDS National Committee and carried by unions, churches, universities, and student groups abroad. In the two decades since, it has drawn divestment decisions, academic and cultural boycotts, and, in response, a wave of anti-boycott legislation in the United States and Europe — the measure of a campaign that moved the argument over Palestine into civil society worldwide.