Palestinian civil society thinks that calling for “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) represents a creative breakthrough to shake off the burden of Israel’s occupation regime in historic Palestine. Historically, resistance to Zionist intrusion into Palestine can be traced back to the mid-1920s. So far, however, all strategies have failed both before and after the establishment of the State of Israel.
The British colonial Mandate regime subdued the Arab revolt of 1936-1939 and killed its leader Izz ad-Din al-Qassam. In his memory, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas established in 1991 the “Al-Qassam Brigades” tasked to resist further Israeli land theft and the strangulation of Palestinians. The strategy of “armed struggle” pursued by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), was abandoned after the organisation was expelled from Lebanon in 1982 and scattered to the four winds.
Slowly but surely, the PLO adopted a more realistic approach that led – besides the proclamation of the State of Palestine – to the recognition of the State of Israel in Algiers on 15 November 1988, although Israel’s right-wing government under Yitzhak Shamir didn’t relish to be recognized by, what he dubbed, a “terror organization”.