Palestinian Civil Society

Calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel Until it Complies with International Law and Universal Principles of Human Rights

                                      9 July 2005

One year after the historic Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which found Israel’s Wall built on occupied Palestinian territory to be illegal, Israel continues its construction of the colonial Wall with total disregard to the Court’s decision. Thirty eight years into Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian West Bank (including East Jerusalem), Gaza Strip and the Syrian Golan Heights, Israel continues to expand Jewish colonies. It has unilaterally annexed occupied East
Jerusalem and the Golan Heights and is now de facto annexing large parts of the West Bank by means of the Wall.

Israel is also preparing - in the shadow of its planned redeployment from the Gaza Strip - to build and expand colonies in the West Bank. Fifty seven years after the state of Israel was built mainly on land ethnically cleansed of its Palestinian owners, a majority of Palestinians are refugees, most of whom are stateless. Moreover, Israel's entrenched system of racial discrimination against its own Arab-Palestinian citizens remains intact.

In light of Israel’s persistent violations of international law, and Given that, since 1948, hundreds of UN resolutions have condemned Israel’s colonial and discriminatory policies as illegal and called for immediate, adequate and effective remedies, and Given that all forms of international intervention and peace-making have until now failed to convince or force Israel to comply with humanitarian law, to respect fundamental human rights and to end its occupation and oppression of the people of Palestine, and In view of the fact that people of conscience in the international community have historically shouldered the moral responsibility to fight injustice, as exemplified in the struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa through diverse forms of boycott, divestment and sanctions;

Inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid and in the spirit of international solidarity, moral consistency and resistance to injustice and oppression,

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. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this Call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace.

These non-violent punitive measures should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:

1.
Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;

2.
Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and

3.
Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

Endorsed by so far over 170 organisations:

The Palestinian political parties, unions, associations, coalitions and organizations
below represent the three integral parts of the people of Palestine: Palestinian
refugees, Palestinians under occupation and Palestinian citizens of Israel.

List includes:

Unions, Associations, Campaigns

1. Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine

(coordinating body for the major political parties in the Occupied Palestinian Territory)

2. Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizen's Rights (PICCR)

3. Union of Arab Community Based Associations (ITTIJAH), Haifa

4. Forum of Palestinian NGOs in Lebanon

5. Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU)

6. General Union of Palestinian Women (GUPW)

7. General Union of Palestinian Teachers (GUPT)

8. Federation of Unions of Palestinian Universities’ Professors and Employees

9. Consortium of Professional Associations

10. Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees (UPMRC)

11. Health Work Committees – West Bank

12. Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC)

13. Union of Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC)

14. Union of Health Work Committees – Gaza (UHWC)

15. Union of Palestinian Farmers

16. Occupied Palestine and Syrian Golan Heights Advocacy Initiative (OPGAI)

17. General Union of Disabled Palestinians

18. Palestinian Federation of Women's Action Committees (PFWAC)

19. Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)

20. Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign

21. Union of Teachers of Private Schools

22. Union of Women's Work Committees, Tulkarem (UWWC)

23. Dentists' Association – Jerusalem Center

24. Palestinian Engineers Association

25. Lawyers' Association

26. Network for the Eradication of Illiteracy and Adult Education, Ramallah

27. Coordinating Committee of Rehabilitation Centers – West Bank

28. Coalition of Lebanese Civil Society Organizations (150 organizations)

29. Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR), Network of Student-based Canadian
University Associations

Refugee Rights Associations/Organizations

1. Al-Ard Committees for the Defense of the Right of Return, Syria

2. Al-Awda Charitable Society, Beit Jala

3. Al Awda - Palestine Right-to-Return Coalition, U.S.A

4. Al-Awda Toronto

5. Aidun Group – Lebanon

6. Aidun Group – Syria

7. Alrowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Center, Aida refugee camp

8. Association for the Defense of the Rights of the Internally Displaced (ADRID), Nazareth

9. BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, Bethlehem

10. Committee for Definite Return, Syria

11. Committee for the Defense of Palestinian Refugee Rights, Nablus

12. Consortium of the Displaced Inhabitants of Destroyed Palestinian Villages and Towns

13. Filastinuna – Commission for the Defense of the Right of Return, Syria

14. Handala Center, 'Azza (Beit Jibreen) refugee camp, Bethlehem

15. High Committee for the Defense of the Right of Return, Jordan

(including personal endorsement of 71 members of parliament, political parties and unions in Jordan)

16. High National Committee for the Defense of the Right of Return , Ramallah

17. International Right of Return Congress (RORC)

18. Jermana Youth Forum for the Defense of the Right of Return, Syria

19. Laji Center, Aida camp, Bethlehem

20. Local Committee for Rehabilitation, Qalandia refugee camp, Jerusalem

21. Local Committee for Rehabilitation of the Disabled, Deheishe refugee camp, Bethlehem

22. Palestinian National Committee for the Defense of the Right of Return, Syria

23. Palestinian Return Association, Syria

24. Palestinian Return Forum, Syria

25. Palestine Right-of-Return Coalition (Palestine, Arab host countries, Europe, North
America)

26. Palestine Right-of-Return Confederation-Europe (Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland,
Sweden)

27. Palestinian Youth Forum for the Right of Return, Syria

28. PLO Popular Committees – West Bank refugee camps

29. PLO Popular Committees – Gaza Strip refugee camps

30. Popular Committee – al-'Azza (Beit Jibreen) refugee camp, Bethlehem

31. Popular Committee – Deheishe refugee camp, Bethlehem

32. Shaml - Palestinian Diaspora and Refugee Center, Ramallah

33. Union of Women's Activity Centers – West Bank Refugee Camps

34. Union of Youth Activity Centers – Palestine Refugee Camps, West Bank and Gaza

35. Women's Activity Center – Deheishe refugee camp, Bethlehem

36. Yafa Cultural Center, Balata refugee camp, Nablus

Organizations

1. Abna' al-Balad Society, Nablus

2. Addameer Center for Human Rights, Gaza

3. Addameer Prisoners' Support and Human Rights Association, Ramallah

4. Alanqa' Cultural Association, Hebron

5. Al-Awda Palestinian Folklore Society, Hebron

6. Al-Doha Children’s Cultural Center, Bethlehem

7. Al-Huda Islamic Center, Bethlehem

8. Al-Jeel al-Jadid Society, Haifa

9. Al-Karameh Cultural Society, Um al-Fahm

10. Al-Maghazi Cultural Center, Gaza

11. Al-Marsad Al-Arabi, occupied Syrian Golan Heights

12. Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, Gaza

13. Al-Nahda Cultural Forum, Hebron

14. Al-Taghrid Society for Culture and Arts, Gaza

15. Alternative Tourism Group, Beit Sahour (ATG)

16. Al-Wafa' Charitable Society, Gaza

17. Applied Research Institute Jerusalem (ARIJ)

18. Arab Association for Human Rights, Nazareth (HRA)

19. Arab Center for Agricultural Development (ACAD)

20. Arab Center for Agricultural Development-Gaza

21. Arab Education Institute (AEI) – Pax Christie Bethlehem

22. Arab Orthodox Charitable Society – Beit Sahour

23. Arab Orthodox Charity – Beit Jala

24. Arab Orthodox Club – Beit Jala

25. Arab Orthodox Club – Beit Sahour

26. Arab Students' Collective, University of Toronto

27. Arab Thought Forum, Jerusalem (AFT)

28. Association for Cultural Exchange Hebron - France

29. Association Najdeh, Lebanon

30. Authority for Environmental Quality, Jenin

31. Bader Society for Development and Reconstruction, Gaza

32. Canadian Palestine Foundation of Quebec, Montreal

33. Center for the Defense of Freedoms, Ramallah

34. Center for Science and Culture, Gaza

35. Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Ramallah- Al-Bireh District

36. Child Development and Entertainment Center, Tulkarem

37. Committee for Popular Participation, Tulkarem

38. Defense for Children International-Palestine Section, Ramallah - DCI/PS

39. El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe

40. Ensan Center for Democracy and Human Rights, Bethlehem

41. Environmental Education Center, Bethlehem

42. FARAH – Palestinian Center for Children, Syria

43. Ghassan Kanafani Society for Development, Gaza

44. Ghassan Kanafani Forum, Syria

45. Gaza Community Mental Health Program, Gaza (GCMHP)

46. Golan for Development, occupied Syrian Golan Heights

47. Halhoul Cultural Forum, Hebron

48. Himayeh Society for Human Rights, Um al-Fahm

49. Holy Land Trust – Bethlehem

50. Home of Saint Nicholas for Old Ages – Beit Jala

51. Human Rights Protection Center, Lebanon

52. In'ash al-Usrah Society, Ramallah

53. International Center of Bethlehem (Dar An-Nadweh)

54. Islah Charitable Society-Bethlehem

55. Jafra Youth Center, Syria

56. Jander Center, al-Azza (Beit Jibreen) refugee camp, Bethlehem

57. Jerusalem Center for Women, Jerusalem (JCW)

58. Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center (JLAC )

59. Khalil Al Sakakini Cultural Center, Ramallah

60. Land Research Center, Jerusalem (LRC)

61. Liberated Prisoners' Society, Palestine

62. Local Committee for Social Development, Nablus

63. Local Committee for the Rehabilitation of the Disabled, Nablus

64. MA'AN TV Network, Bethlehem

65. Medical Aid for Palestine, Canada

66. MIFTAH-Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy,
Ramallah

67. Muwatin-The Palestinian Institute for the Study of Democracy

68. National Forum of Martyr's Families, Palestine

69. Near East Council of Churches Committee for Refugee Work – Gaza Area

70. Network of Christian Organizations – Bethlehem - NCOB

71. Palestinian Council for Justice and Peace, Jerusalem

72. Palestinian Counseling Center, Jerusalem (PCC)

73. Palestinian Democratic Youth Union, Lebanon

74. Palestinian Farmers' Society, Gaza

75. Palestinian Hydrology Group for Water and Environment Resources Development-Gaza

76. Palestinian Prisoners' Society-West Bank

77. Palestinian Society for Consumer Protection, Gaza

78. Palestinian University Students' Forum for Peace and Democracy, Hebron

79. Palestinian Women's Struggle Committees

80. Palestinian Working Women Society for Development (PWWSD)

81. Popular Art Centre, Al-Bireh

82. Prisoner's Friends Association – Ansar Al-Sajeen, Majd al-Krum

83. Public Aid Association, Gaza

84. Ramallah Center for Human Rights Studies

85. Saint Afram Association – Bethlehem

86. Saint Vincent De Paule – Beit Jala

87. Senior Citizen Society – Beit Jala

88. Social Development Center, Nablus

89. Society for Self-Development, Hebron

90. Society for Social Work, Tulkarem

91. Society for Voluntary Work and Culture, Um al-Fahm

92. Society of Friends of Prisoners and Detainees, Um al-Fahm

93. Sumoud-Political Prisoners Solidarity Group, Toronto

94. Tamer Institute for Community Education, Ramallah

95. TCC – Teacher's Creativity Center, Ramallah

96. Wi'am Center, Bethlehem

97. Women's Affairs Technical Committee, Ramallah and Gaza (WATC)

98. Women's Studies Center, Jerusalem (WSC)

99. Women's Center for Legal Aid and Counseling, Jerusalem (WCLAC)

100.Yafa for Education and Culture, Nablus

101.Yazour Charitable Society, Nablus

102.YMCA-East Jerusalem

103.Youth Cooperation Forum, Hebron

104.YWCA-Palestine

105.Zakat Committee-al-Khader, Bethlehen

106.Zakat Committee-Deheishe camp, Bethlehem

Call by Palestinian Civil Society for Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (English).pdf

“This is much worse than apartheid. The Israeli measures, the brutality, make apartheid look like a picnic. We never had jets attacking our townships. We never had sieges that lasted month after month. We never had tanks destroying houses.
We had armoured vehicles and police using small arms to shoot people but not on this scale.”

—Ronnie Kasrils after a 2004 visit to the Palestinian territories, quoted in Chris McGreal, Mail & Guardian, October 24, 2006

“Apartheid was all about land. Apartheid was about keeping the best parts of the country for the whites and sending the blacks to the least habitable, least desirable parts of the country. And one sees that all the time here, particularly with the wall, now, which is really a land grab. One sees Palestinians dispossessed of their homes by bulldozers. One can draw certain parallels with respect to South Africa that, during the heyday of apartheid, population relocation did result in destruction of
property, but not on the same scale as the devastation in Gaza in particular, [or in] the West Bank.”

—John Dugard, South African lawyer and UN human rights monitor, quoted in Chris McGreal, Mail & Guardian, October 24, 2006.

“The end of apartheid stands as one of the crowning accomplishments of the past century, but we would not have succeeded without the help of international pressure—in particular the divestment movement of the 1980s. Over the past six months a similar movement has taken shape, this time aiming at an end to the Israeli occupation....These tactics are not the only parallels to the struggle against apartheid. Yesterday’s South African township dwellers can tell you about today’s life in the occupied territories….If apartheid ended, so can the occupation, but the moral force and international pressure will have to be just as determined.”

—Archbishop Desmond Tutu, The Nation, July 15, 2002

 “Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.”

—Former South African President Hendrick Verwoerd, Rand Daily Mail, November
23, 1961

Quotes by Israeli Individuals and Organizations on the Apartheid Analogy

“The US Jewish Establishment’s onslaught on former President Jimmy Carter is based on him daring to tell the truth which is known to all: through its army, the government of Israel practices a brutal form of Apartheid in the territory it occupies. Its army has turned every Palestinian village and town into a fenced-in, or blocked-in, detention camp.”

—Former Israeli Minister for Education and Israeli Prize laureate Shulamit Aloni, Yediot Acharonot, December 20, 2006.

“Israel has created in the Occupied Territories a regime of separation based on discrimination, applying two separate systems of law in the same are and basing the rights of individuals on their nationality. This regime is the only one of its kind in the world, as is reminiscent of distasteful regimes from the past, such as the apartheid regime in South Africa.”

—Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, Land Grab: Israel’s Settlement Policy in the West Bank, May 2002

 “It goes without saying that ‘cooperation’ based on the current power relationship is no more than permanent Israeli domination in disguise, and that Palestinian self-rule is merely a euphemism for Bantustanization.”

—Former mayor of Jerusalem Meron Benvenisti, Intimate Enemies, 1995

 “To a Jew, to concede the predominance of a racial world view of subjugating Palestinians is difficult to accept. But, unfortunately, the fact of the absence of a racial ideology is not sufficient because the realities that have emerged in some ways are clearly reminiscent of some of the important trappings of an apartheid regime.”

—Israeli lawyer Daniel Seidemann, quoted by Chris McGreal, “Brothers in arms: Israel’s secret pact with Pretoria,” Mail & Guardian, October 24, 2006

http://www.endtheoccupation.org/downloads/AAFQuotes.pdf

Boycott Now!

This open official racism and its attendant violence casts Israel into the ranks of pariah states, of which South Africa was the former banner emblem. In both countries, racist nationalist logic tormented and humiliated the native people. It also regularly spilled over to destabilize their surrounding regions (choc-a-block with "demographic threats"), leading both regimes to cruel and reckless attacks. Driven by a sense of perennial victimhood, they assumed the moral authority to crush the native hordes that threatened to dilute the organic Afrikaner/Jewish nations and the white/western civilization they believed they so nobly represented.

(1) Serious external pressure: here, a full boycott that undermines Israel's capacity to sustain the economic standards its citizens and corporations expect, and which they associate with their own progressive self-image; and

(2) clear and unwavering commitment to the boycott's goal, which - in Israel as in South Africa - must be full equality, dignity, safety, and welfare of everyone in the land, including Palestinians, whose ancestral culture arose there, and the Jewish population, which has built a national society there.