It would seem that activist groups like the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) are far more Palestinian than the Palestinians themselves. Indeed some of their boycott, disinvestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigning has led to the loss of jobs for Palestinians in the West Bank and the creation of job-opportunities for Israelis in Israel instead. It isn’t just this blog that claims the futility of BDS and the futility of SPSC efforts, Bishara Shlayan, an Israeli Christian Arab from Nazareth, and many Palestinian businessmen and workers claim this too.
Shlayan is creating a new Arab political party in Israel and he believes that the EU boycott of Israeli businesses and institutions operating in the West Bank is counter-productive since this will mainly harm Arabs in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). Palestinian businessmen and workers say that the EU’s new guidelines limiting co-operation with Jewish settlements, and the calls generally to boycott Israeli products made over the Green Line (the lines that existed pre-1967 War) are madness. The BDS campaigning totally ignores the fact that the settlement firms and Israeli industries operating in the West Bank allow Jew and Moslem Arab and Christian to work shoulder to shoulder, offer a chance for Israelis and Palestinians to work together, to talk to one another, and to trust one another.
A curious outcome of the EU decisions is that a number of firms have decamped from the West Bank and have opened in Israel instead. Among these are Unilever which moved its ‘Bagel-Bage’l factory from the West Bank to the ancient Jewish town of Safed in the Northern District of Israel, and Sweden’s ‘Mul-T-Lock’ firm which followed suit and moved its factory to Yavneh in the Central District.
This is an outcome that the fascist nut-jobs, gauleiters, and little student acolytes of the SPSC could never have imagined.
סולידריות ISRAEL soliydariyut 