BDS Won't End the Occupation

Gil Kulick is a long-time Middle East peace activist and a former US Foreign Service officer who served at the US embassy in Tel Aviv.  He is a member of the National Advisory Board of J Street, but the views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily represent J Street policy.  This article is adapted from Mr. Kulick's remarks in a debate about BDS on November 11, 2010, in Brooklyn, NY.  It will be featured in the coming issue of ISRAEL HORIZONS magazine.

I share the frustration of those who have turned to boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel out of despair over the lack of progress toward ending the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.  But I don’t have sympathy for those who advocate BDS as a means of eliminating Israel as a Jewish state; this includes many of its most ardent proponents in the Global BDS Movement. 

The Jewish Voice for Peace says that it takes no position on whether the outcome of this struggle should be two states or one state. The reality, however, is that anything other than a two-state solution means the disappearance of Israel as a Jewish state, which to me is totally unacceptable. 

But above all, whether your goal is two states or a single so-called “secular democratic state,” BDS will not get you there. If we don’t bring an end to the occupation through a negotiated two-state agreement in the near future, we will end up with one state, but it won’t be the kind of state that many BDS advocates envision.

I’m certain that Israeli Jews will never give up their country’s Jewish identity in favor of a phantom “secular democratic state” – an imaginary one with an Arab majority but perfect equality for all its citizens.  Rather, if we fail to end the occupation, Israel and the occupied territories will become an increasingly authoritarian de facto single state with a Palestinian majority, dominated by a Jewish minority. What you will have created is something resembling the apartheid state many claim – falsely – that Israel has already become.  In other words, BDS can create a fulfilling prophesy.

I’m afraid that things in Israel are already heading in that lamentable direction. We see many early signs of creeping quasi-fascism in the bills before the Knesset that would impose loyalty oaths, criminalize free speech, and restrict the rights of its Arab citizens. But efforts to demonize and delegitimize Israel through boycotts, divestment, and sanctions will only accelerate that trend.  

What BDS not do is induce Israelis to re-examine and reject the disastrous anti-democratic policies that Netanyahu's government is pursuing.  On the contrary, they will confirm the conviction that “the whole world is against us,” and that patriotic Israelis must rally around their hard-line government, whatever their misgivings.

BDS will not produce the outcome its proponents pursue, whether that’s to end the occupation or, perniciously, to bring about the collapse of the Zionist enterprise. Davka, they will only make the current intolerable situation worse.  So what, if anything, has a chance of bringing about the just and lasting peace we all sincerely seek, even if we have very different visions of what that means? 

I believe that the only thing that has a chance of turning Israel around from its self-destructive course is a tremendous shift in public opinion, both in Israel and the United States.  Something dramatic needs to be done to persuade Israelis and American Jews, as well as Palestinians, that there  a formula that can bring about a negotiated end to the occupation – which a great majority of Israelis actually desire – leading to two states for two peoples, while meeting Israel’s fundamental and legitimate security concerns.

We know there is such a formula, because its terms have been elaborated at least twice – in the Geneva Accord and the Ayalon-Nusseibeh initiative – by high-level and highly respected leaders on both sides.  Those terms were also laid out in the so-called Clinton Parameters, which the United States belatedly put forth after the failure of Camp David 2000 and, fatally, after the second Intifada had begun.  And Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert came painfully close to reaching an agreement along these lines in 2008, just before the current right-wing government unfortunately came to power.  As has often been wryly observed, “We can see the light at the end of the tunnel; we just can't find the tunnel.”

But these formulas have failed to gain traction with most Israelis, because they haven’t been confronted with any hard choices.  Efforts to cajole or bribe Netanyahu into halting settlement expansion have failed because the US has been unwilling, for whatever reason, to impose penalties for his refusal.  So far, it’s been all carrots and no sticks.  So, with their economy booming and terrorism almost completely in check, the Israeli public has felt no urgency to seriously challenge continuing settlement building and other peace-subverting policies.

The Palestinians may have come further toward compromise on core issues, but they too are holding out, at least publicly, on hard-core demands like the Right of Return, which I don’t doubt their leadership knows – notwithstanding the Global BDS Movement – they will have to relinquish in all but symbolic form in a final-status agreement.

If there is to be any chance for ending this stalemate – and ultimately the occupation – all that has to change, and soon.  The time has come for the United States – the only party that still has the residual trust of both sides – to audaciously confront both parties, and the Israeli and Palestinian publics, with hard choices. 

I believe the President of the United States, from the rostrum of the Knesset, should publicly put on the table the terms of an agreement, along the lines of the Clinton Parameters, that majorities of both Israelis and Palestinians, as well as in the United States, could see as a realistic and reasonable set of compromises that meets each side’s most fundamental requirements.

Having laid out this vision – on which there is already a large degree of consensus – the U.S. should challenge both sides to embrace it or be seen by their own publics and the rest of the world as the recalcitrant party, standing in the way of a peaceful resolution of the conflict.  I could be naïve, but my guess is that the PLO under Abu Mazen is likely to be more amenable to such proposals than a Likud-led government, headed by Netanyahu and beholden to the militant settlers and the likes of Avigdor Lieberman.

And, finally, there must be consequences for whoever is seen as rejecting reasonable compromise and standing in the way of peace.  The U.S. must make it clear that there will be no more “business as usual” with Israel – or with the Palestinians – if they continue to block the road to peace.

This would be very tricky business. The President would have to tread an extremely thin line between tepid rhetorical responses – such as the State Department’s latest description of Israel’s outrageous announcement of 1,300 new housing units in East Jerusalem and Ariel as “unhelpful” – and blunt instruments like threatening to withhold military aid, which could provoke fear and defiance like that aroused by BDS.  I’m convinced that, with political will and diplomatic skill, it can be done.

If that needle can be threaded, I believe – or at least fervently hope – that the Israeli electorate, which until now has allowed itself to be convinced that “there’s no partner for peace,” would want to grasp this unprecedented opportunity and begin to turn away from right-wing obduracy standing in its way.  And I expect that a majority of American Jews would stand with our government in its daring effort to sever this most Gordian of knots. 

But of one thing I’m fairly sure: Israel feeling isolated and threatened by boycotts and divestment would be much less likely to take risks for peace – for the risks are real – than an Israel that felt its legitimate place in the family of nations was secure.

There is, of course, no guarantee that such a ploy would work, or even that it will be undertaken.  It’s not unimaginable that the Palestinians could prove equally recalcitrant, that Hamas could sabotage any agreement, or that the Israeli public has moved so irredeemably to the right that they would reject even an exquisitely fair and balanced set of proposals.  Or that the conventional Israel Lobby and a Republican-controlled Congress could generate so much opposition in the United States that a weakened president would feel constrained to back down once again.

Under such circumstances, the role of pro-Israel, pro-peace organizations like J Street – and indeed every person who is committed to peace for Israel and justice for the Palestinians – could be critical in giving the president the backing – and the backbone – he would need to stand his ground.  We must speak out publicly and vociferously in support of the President, flood Congress and the media with calls and letters, and give generously to groups working to mobilize support in the Jewish community and beyond.

Even all that could well prove insufficient, but I believe it’s our only hope. Traditional quiet diplomacy seems to have run out of steam.  No less than such a daring initiative has a chance of breaking the impasse at which nearly two decades of negotiations have arrived.

Let’s hope that very soon, policymakers in Washington come to the same conclusion.   If Barack Obama, with all his peacemaking ambition and goodwill, cannot bring about a two-state solution in the next two years, no American President will again risk his prestige on such a losing venture, perhaps in our lifetimes.  And for me, the consequences of failure and the prospect of endless conflict, oppression, and accelerating isolation and erosion of Israel’s democracy are too awful to contemplate.