A few days ago I spoke to a student audience in support of a divestment resolution that was to be submitted for adoption at the University of California at Santa Barbara. The resolution was narrowly defeated the next day in the UCSB Student Senate, but this series of student-initiated efforts to urge several campuses of the University of California to divest from corporations doing profitable business selling military equipment to Israel represents an encouraging awakening on the part of American youth to the severe victimisation of the Palestinian people by way of occupation, discrimination, refugee misery and exile, a worsening set of circumstances that has lasted in various forms for several decades, and shows no signs of ending anytime soon. Ever since the Nakba of 1948, neither traditional diplomacy, nor the United Nations, nor armed struggle have been able to secure Palestinian rights, and as time has passed, Palestinian prospects are being steadily diminished by deliberate Israeli policies: establishment and expansion of unlawful settlements, ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem, the construction of a separation wall that the World Court found in 2004 was being unlawfully built on Palestinian territory, a network of Israeli only roads, a dualistic system of laws that have an apartheid character, widespread abuse of Palestinian prisoners, systematic discrimination of the Palestinian minority living in pre-1967 Israel, and more. Israel has been consistently defiant in relation to international law and the UN, and has refused to uphold Palestinian rights under international law. Given this set of circumstances that combine the failures of diplomacy to achieve a fair peaceful resolution to the conflict and the unwillingness of Israel to fulfil its obligations under international law, the only viable option consistent with the imperatives of global justice are a blend of continuing Palestinian resistance and a militant global solidarity campaign that is nonviolent, yet coercive. The Palestinian struggle for self-determination has become the great international moral issue of our time, a successor to the struggle in South Africa a generation ago against its form of institutionalised racism, the original basis of the international crime of apartheid. It is notable that the Statute of the International Criminal Court designates apartheid as one type of crime against humanity, and associates it with any structure of discrimination that is based on ethnicity or religion, and not necessarily a structure exhibiting the same characteristics as present in South Africa. Increasingly, independent inquiry has concluded that Israel's occupation of Palestine is accurately considered to be a version of apartheid, and hence an ongoing crime against humanity. It is against this background that divestment initiatives and the wider BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) Campaign take on such importance at this time, especially here in America where the governing authorities turn a blind eye to Israel's wrongdoing and yet continue to insist on their capacity to provide a trustworthy intermediary perspective that is alleged to be the only path to peace, a claim that goes back to the aftermath of the 1967 war, and is more definitively linked to the brokered famous handshake on the White House lawn affirming the 1993 Oslo Framework as the authoritative foundation for the resolution of the conflict. It has turned out that Oslo has been a horrible failure from the perspective of achieving Palestinian rights and yet a huge success from the standpoint of the Israeli expansionist blueprint, which included the annexation of the most fertile and desirable land in the West Bank and the consolidation of unified control over the sacred city of Jerusalem. Against this background, there is only a single way forward: the mobilisation of transnational civil society to join the struggle mounted by the Palestinians for an end to occupation in a manner that produces a just solution, including respect for the rights of Palestinian refugees. If this solidarity surge happens on a sufficient scale it will weaken Israel internally and internationally, and hopefully would lead to an altered political climate in Israel and the United States that would at long last become receptive to an outcome consistent with international law and morality. Such a posture would be in contrast with what these two governments have for so long insisted upon: a “solution” that translated Israel's hard power dominance, including the “facts on the ground” that it has steadily created, into arrangements falsely called “peace”. After I presented this argument supporting the divestment resolution, several important questions were asked by members of a generally appreciative student audience: Q: “Some people object to this divestment effort as unfairly singling out Israel when there are so many other situations in the world where unlawful behaviour and oppressive policies have resulted in more extreme forms of victimisation than that experienced by the Palestinians. Why single out the Israelis for this kind of hostile manoeuvre?” There are several ways to respond: American support of Israel is itself reason enough to justify the current level of attention. Despite Israel's relative affluence, American taxpayers foot the bill for $3 billion+ per year, more than is given to the whole of Africa and Latin America, which amounts to $8.7 million per day. Additional to the financial contribution is the extraordinary level of diplomatic support that privileges Israel above any other allied country, and extends to pushing policies that reflect Israeli priorities even when adverse to American national interests. This is the case with respect to Iran's nuclear programme. The most stabilising move would be to propose a nuclear free zone for the entire Middle East, but the United States will not even mention such an option for fear of occasioning some kind of backlash orchestrated by an irate leadership in Tel Aviv. The world community as a whole, particularly the UN, undertook a major responsibility for the future of Palestine when it adopted General Assembly Resolution 181 proposing the partition of historic Palestine, giving 55 per cent for a Jewish homeland and 45 per cent to the Palestinians; even since the Balfour Declaration in 1917, the wishes of the indigenous population of Palestine have been disregarded in favour of colonialist ambitions; Palestine remains the last and most unfortunate instance of an ongoing example of settler colonialism, exemplified by the dispossession and subjugation of the indigenous population as a result of violent suppression. The settlers in this usage are all those that displace the indigenous population, depriving such people of their right of self-determination, and should not be confused with ‘settlers' from Israel that establish enclaves of domination within occupied Palestine. Q: “Some persons have said that we should not push for divestment because it makes Jewish students on campus uncomfortable. Is there some basis for taking such sensitivities into account?” It is important not to allow Zionist propaganda to make us believe that being critical of Israel is tantamount to anti-Semitism and hostility to Jews as a religious and ethnic minority in this country and elsewhere. Because anti-Semitism did produce such horrible historical abuses of Jews, it is a cruel and opportunistic tactic to mislead public opinion in this manner. Not only Jews, but also all of us must learn that we are human before we are Jews, or any other ethnicity. I am Jewish, but it is more important to privilege human interests, and to avoid the narrow partisanship of tribal loyalties. If we are to survive on this crowded planet we must learn, in the words of W H Auden, “to love one another or die”. It would be odd if as citizens of the United States we were to refrain criticising the government in Washington because we didn't want to make Americans feel uncomfortable. At this stage, we have an obligation to make those who shield Israel from criticism feel uncomfortable, not because they are Jewish but because they are being complicit in the commission of crimes against a vulnerable people that have long endured unimaginable levels of abuse. Q: “Is there any reason to believe that the Israeli government will change its policies as a result of the pressures mounted by divestment measures of this kind, even if implemented, which seems highly unlikely?” The importance of this divestment campaign is partly symbolic and partly substantive. Such initiatives are only undertaken after a prolonged failure of traditional means of overcoming international situations of extreme injustice. As such, it sends a message of distress as well as seeks to discourage corporations from making profits from transactions relating to unlawful activities in Israel, especially relating to uses of force against the Palestinian civilian population. Beyond this, we never know whether a combination of factors produced such pressure that those responsible for policy recalculate their interests and make a drastic change that could not have been anticipated. This happened to the white leadership in South Africa, leading to the release of Nelson Mandela from prison after 27 years, and a reconciliation process that allowed the oppressed black majority to assume leadership of the country on the basis of a constitutionally mandated inclusive democracy. No one now expects an analogous transformation in Israel, but it will surely not come about without making the status quo increasingly unsustainable for the oppressor, as it has long been for the oppressed.
The writer is professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, visiting distinguished professor in global and international studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and currently serving his third year of a six-year term as UN special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.
