Why Israel Should Be Concerned by Boycott Legislation in Chile and Ireland

In January, the lower house of the Irish parliament voted in favor of a measure, already approved by the Irish senate, to criminalize the purchase of goods or services from Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Golan Heights. Two months prior, the lower house of the Chilean parliament voted, by a margin of 99 to 7, to call upon the government to reconsider trade deals with Israel so as to restrict commerce in lands acquired in 1967. Amir Prager writes:

Ireland and Chile have long been a platform for global anti-Israeli activity, including for the boycott, divest, and sanction (BDS) movement. Last October, 50 Irish lawmakers, including a lower-ranking government minister, called for an arms embargo on Israel. In April 2018 the Union of Students in Ireland and the Dublin City Council expressed their support of BDS. . . .

Chile, [for its part], is home to the largest community of Palestinian expatriates outside of the Middle East. The Los Rios province, in the south of the country, announced in April 2018 that Israel is responsible for war crimes and for maintaining an apartheid regime, and called on the Chilean government to condemn Israel’s actions and reevaluate existing collaboration with the Israeli military. . . .

At this point, the direct impact of both proposals is not significant. The Chilean proposal is not binding. The Irish proposal, while detailed and binding, requires additional steps to become legislation and might actually run into procedural and political hurdles that could neutralize it altogether or remove its obligating aspects. . . . Nevertheless, in the medium and long terms the impact of both proposals could become significant. The proposals highlight the illegitimacy that different countries ascribe to Israeli activities in the West Bank and the growing willingness to take substantive action against it and . . . provide moral support for organizations that delegitimize the state of Israel.

Confirming the proposals against the backdrop of reports that a blacklist of companies operating in the settlements is about to be published by the UN Human Rights Council might motivate anti-Israel organizations and activists to promote similar campaigns in other countries and forums, some of which might be more important to Israel and could also lead to the adoption of more severe decisions. In addition, there is growing concern that an official decision about boycotting settlement products could encourage additional formal or informal boycotts on Israeli companies associated with the settlements, for example, through the activity of Israeli banks that provide loans and mortgages for residential and commercial purposes in the settlements.

Read more at Institute for National Security Studies

More about: BDS, Ireland, Israel & Zionism, South America

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF