(1) From ceasefire to ceasing the genocide
The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the largest coalition in Palestinian society that is leading the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, welcomes the news of a ceasefire agreement with immense relief. A ceasefire, however, is only the most important first step to end the genocide against the 2.3 million Palestinians in the illegally occupied and besieged Gaza Strip. Without massive pressure, it may constitute a continuation of a less visible form of genocide that Israel and the US hope will provoke less regional and global outrage, boycotts and sanctions.
After all, Israel’s genocide, armed, funded and shielded from accountability by the colonial West, intentionally reduced the illegally occupied Gaza Strip into an unlivable territory by destroying life-sustaining conditions designed to cause continued mass loss of Palestinian lives and spread of infectious diseases as well as famine or food insecurity for years to come, while attempting to force as many Palestinians as possible into exile. According to UN human rights experts, this genocide has included “domicide, urbicide, scholasticide, medicide, cultural genocide and, more recently, ecocide.” The devastating effects of all these crimes, as well as the Israeli-induced starvation, will continue to kill thousands more Palestinians due to the immense carnage and Israel’s wilful destruction of life-sustaining conditions across Gaza.
Only massive global pressure, especially in the form of BDS, can truly contribute to ending Israel’s genocide and support the Palestinian struggle to dismantle Israeli apartheid.
(2) Ending impunity and enforcing accountability for humanity’s sake
Israel’s unparalleled impunity is what has allowed it to maintain its 76-year-old regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid and emboldened it to unleash the world’s first livestreamed genocide. It is now a threat not just to Palestinian existence but to humanity at large. Most nations today see Israel as a rogue genocidal state that openly defies international law, threatening its very foundations.
For many months, it has not only killed and injured Palestinians and other Arabs, but also UN staff and international humanitarian aid workers. Its prime minister is a fugitive, wanted by the International Criminal Court for perpetrating extermination and other crimes against humanity. The International Court of Justice has ruled that its occupation is illegal, that it is imposing a regime of apartheid on Palestinians, and that it is plausibly committing genocide. This has severely and irreparably damaged Israel’s international standing, even more than before.
Without serious accountability, Israel’s mass extermination “experiment” in Gaza will be a model for an unprecedented might-makes-right era, where powerful colonial states can “dispose of” weaker nations and racialized communities everywhere.
(3) Despite its propaganda, apartheid Israel is more vulnerable than ever to pressure
Failing to achieve its declared objectives in Gaza, mainly due to the legendary sumud, resilience and resistance of the Palestinian people, supported by an exponentially growing global solidarity movement, Israel was reportedly forced to accept in this ceasefire agreement conditions that it had adamantly rejected for many months. Most analyses of Israel’s genocide and wars of aggression against Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, have ignored the simultaneously rotting core of its settler-colonial regime.
Israel is facing what its top economists describe as an economic “spiral of collapse,” with an almost unprecedented “brain drain” and a nosediving tech industry, which accounts for almost half of all Israeli exports. Israel’s debt, at $340 billion, has become nearly unmanageable; its Moody’s credit rating is near “junk” levels; its growth rate in 2024 was zero, according to S&P; foreign investments are drying up; and its internal strife threatens an impending socio-cultural and political implosion. Aside from fanatic, genocide-supporting Zionists, most rational investors today are beginning to see Israel as a #ShutDownNation.
This all explains Israel’s exacerbated vulnerability to boycotts, divestment and sanctions worldwide, showing us all what we need to do to further isolate it and end its criminal impunity.
(4) Preventing the US and Europe from rehabilitating apartheid Israel globally and from further normalizing its relations with Arab dictatorships
A primary objective that this US-Israeli genocide has also failed to achieve is to sear into the collective Palestinian and Arab consciousness a debilitating sense of defeat and despair. Israel and the US wish to make Palestinians forget our historical rights and focus instead only on the extremely urgent and mammoth task of reconstructing Gaza, ending the 18-year-old siege, and ensuring enough humanitarian supplies reach the terribly battered, starved and devastated Palestinians there.
If the Israeli occupation continues, it would take 350 years, according to UN estimates, to rebuild Gaza, whose ancient history goes back 4,000 years. Recognizing this fact, Palestinians insist on situating recovery for Gaza in the context of escalating our struggle for accountability and liberation. Despite the unspeakable horror of Israel’s genocide, we shall never forget our rights nor forgive those who have deprived us of them for decades and perpetrated war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide to make us surrender. We shall continue to resist Israel’s settler colonialism, apartheid and military occupation, insisting on our full menu of rights, especially the right of our refugees, the absolute majority of the Indigenous Palestinian people, to return home and receive reparations.
Another objective of the genocide is to project Israel’s power in the region, prompting the dictatorships that have not yet normalized relations with it to do so out of fear of its and US wrath. The absolute majority in the Arab region and most countries of the Global South, however, support Palestinian rights more than ever and support isolating Israel to make it pay a heavy price for its genocide. Let’s amplify those voices to hinder normalization attempts.
(5) More than ever, we need more B, D and S!
Our work is not done. Now more than ever, we need effective international solidarity to ensure accountability. As a crucial part of Palestinian popular resistance and the most effective form of international solidarity with our pursuit of freedom, justice and equality, the BDS movement salutes the millions of global supporters who continue to stand in solidarity with us to end the genocide. You have collectively channeled our immense grief and rage into principled and strategic pressure to end international state, corporate and institutional complicity in Israel’s regime of colonial oppression. Your marching, picketing, boycotting, blockading, and occupying, among diverse and creative forms of solidarity, directly pressured those in the halls of power and contributed to making them accede to this ceasefire.
Most urgently, BDS pressure must be mounted like never before to ensure Israel completely ends its genocidal campaign in Gaza, allowing humanitarian aid in without restriction in order to ease its induced famine and the spread of infectious diseases. According to UNRWA, 90% of Palestinians in Gaza, or 1.9 million, are internally displaced. Over two-thirds of Palestinians in Gaza are refugees, having been ethnically cleansed by Israel during the Nakba. All those who fled their homes must be allowed to return to what is left of those homes and assisted to rebuild. Their right of return to their original homes and lands across historic Palestine is more urgent now than ever and cannot be extinguished by genocide, apartheid or the passage of time.
To hold Israel and its enablers accountable to ensure non-repetition of its genocide, the BDS movement calls for escalating pressure in the following areas:
Boycotts:
Grow and spread the boycott of:
- Israeli companies and banks, all of which are complicit in Israel’s crimes
- The priority targets of the BDS movement
- Israel’s academic institutions (all of which are complicit) and complicit cultural sector
- Representatives of Israel in sports (#BanIsrael from the Olympics, FIFA, UEFA, etc.)
- All activities and events that greenwash, pinkwash or otherwise whitewash Israel’s system of oppression.
Declare your trade union, local business, cultural or social organization, church, etc. to be Apartheid Free Zones (AFZ), fostering intersectional solidarity spaces and building BDS campaigns.
Divestment: Organize or join campaigns to make investment funds (state, city, university, institutional, etc.) divest from the most complicit companies listed by:
Sanctions & Policy Measures:
UN:
Reactivate the UN Special Committee Against Apartheid to dismantle and punish Israeli apartheid
Suspend Israel from the UN General Assembly and other UN organs
Exclude from all UN contracts companies that are implicated in Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid or genocide.
ICC:
Prosecute all Israeli war criminals responsible for this genocide, including political leaders and military personnel; all international accomplices in the genocide, particularly the leaders of the United States, including Joe Biden and Antony Blinken, Germany, the UK, EU, among others; and all the managers and executives of military, tech, energy, financial, and media corporations that enabled the genocide in violation of the Genocide Convention.
States:
Impose lawful and targeted sanctions on Israel, including a comprehensive military-security embargo, as well as energy, diplomatic, financial, academic and other sanctions
Investigate and, if warranted, prosecute all Israelis who are reasonably suspected of involvement in international crimes
End all free trade or other cooperation agreements with Israel.
Local and regional councils:
Adopt ethical (human rights) investment and procurement policies, stipulating that the local government will not invest in or contract with companies complicit in grave human rights violations anywhere
Where applicable, sever “sister-city” ties with Israeli cities, as well as any other institutional ties with Israel and officials representing the Israeli government.
With our collective, morally consistent and strategic BDS pressure worldwide, we can make occupation, apartheid and genocide history once and for all. Only then can the true meaning of Never Again be respected and restored.