On Monday, the Central Council of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, officially announced its support for the BDS movement and called, for the first time, on the international community to “impose sanctions on Israel” to end its ongoing, grave violations of Palestinian rights as stipulated by international law.
This is the most explicit and official adoption of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement by the PLO.
Specifically, a statement released by the Palestinian Central Council, the second highest authority in the PLO, agreed to:
Adopt the BDS movement and call on states around the world to impose sanctions on Israel to put an end to its flagrant violations of international law, its continued aggression against the Palestinian people, and to the apartheid regime [Israel has] imposed on them.
This statement emerged from a PLO meeting centered on the Trump administration’s efforts to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, in contravention of decades of US policy and in direct violation of international law. The meeting took place in occupied Ramallah on January 14-15, and included the majority of the PLO Central Council’s 109 members.
It also comes in the wake of Israel’s escalating theft of Palestinian land through its expansion of illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian territory and its ruling party’s escalating efforts to annex all illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. To date, there are more than 600,000 illegal Israeli settlers in the occupied Palestinian West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) said:
As the leadership of the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights, we welcome the PLO’s decision to officially and unequivocally declare its support for the BDS movement, already supported across the breadth of Palestinian society in Palestine and in exile. This declaration, along with the PLO’s unprecedented call for sanctions against Israel, will further enhance the growth and impact of BDS across the world in pursuit of Palestinian freedom, justice and equality.
The PLO’s executive branch should implement the Central Council’s decisions by calling for states to impose meaningful sanctions on Israel’s regime of military occupation and apartheid, like those imposed on apartheid South Africa.
With this official Palestinian backing of BDS, we shall work more diligently than ever with our popular base and international allies to push for a two-way military embargo on Israel, the suspension of free trade agreements with it, and the cessation of trade with or investment in any Israeli or international company involved in Israel’s annexation of occupied Palestinian land and flagrant violation of Palestinian human rights.
Bravo. We’ve been in a bad situation for 50 years, and now it is a crisis. Israel and the USA, especially but not only Trump, have made it a crisis. Now the ball is in the court of the nations. Will they drop the ball by dropping the pretense that there is such a thing as international law, or will they get a backbone? This is the new crisis.
Did people here know Israel has its own “NGO Monitor – Making NGOs Accountable”..
“NGO Monitor is an independent and nonpartisan research institute dedicated to promoting transparency and accountability of NGOs claiming human rights agendas, primarily in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict.”
“NGO Monitor is the leading source of information on political NGOs active in delegitimization campaign against Israel and the role of both government and private funders-enablers.”
“It was founded following the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism held in Durban, South Africa, where NGOs adopted a strategy of using the instruments and language of “human rights” and “international law” to isolate Israel and undermine its right to sovereign equality.”
https://www.ngo-monitor.org/about/faqs/
This is how they describe BDS:
“BDS is the immoral collective punishment of Israelis and those who associate with them, undermining liberal values, such as academic freedom and freedom of expression, by restricting openness and tolerance.”
“BDS is the antithesis of universal human rights values, rooted in double standards that condemn a single country for isolation and pariah status. Through false comparisons to apartheid South Africa, BDS activists attempt to transform a political and territorial dispute into a question of racial discrimination.”
https://www.ngo-monitor.org/key-issues/bds/about/
This NGO watch also works continuously trying to get EU states to cut their support to the NGO’s dealing with the human right issues in the area of Israel/Palestine. Last year they together with Netanyahu were f.ex. pushing Danish government to cut their aid to different NGO’s in the area.
https://www.ngo-monitor.org/about/faqs/
(In the Danish news, it was said though, that they will investigate the claims the NGO Monitor gave them, but did not make a permanent decision on the case).
Anyway, together with European Coalition for Israel, they are doing all they can to clean the broken image of Israel.
Here is an example of a program of ECI, shown on a privat Zionist channel in Finland, the program is in English and should be “watchable” outside Finland:
(It may contain some ads in the beginning, but the program itself is in English!)
http://www.tv7.fi/vod/player/61959/
The other thing the PLO needs to do urgently is to suspend its recognition of Israel until the country has dismantled is apartheid/genocidal system in Israel itself & in the Stolen Palestinian Territories, and has given full & equal rights to the Palestinians.