Israel Faces Challenges From Boycott Campaign
While opposition to Israel is hardly new, the current campaign among Western civil society groups and on college campuses dates to the collapse of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in 2000 and the second intifada. Barbara Slavin on the rise of the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) movement.
As he consolidates his power with a new coalition, incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to continue his unremitting focus on Iran as an existential threat.
However, a bigger challenge to Israel over the long run may be the international campaign to deny the country’s status as a Jewish-governed polity that rules a growing and disenfranchised Palestinian population in the West Bank.
In a major foreign policy address last month, Vice President Joe Biden noted that “President Obama has stood up to what is I think the gravest threat to Israel, the effort of the rest of the world to delegitimize it as a state.”
Biden went on to mention the Obama administration’s blunting of Palestinian efforts to challenge Israel at the United Nations.
