The Growth and Impact of the BDS Movement: Linking Local to Global Context

Abstract

As of 2005, 170 Palestinian civil society groups launched the Boycott, Divestments, and Sanctions movement (BDS) against the Israeli government (Morrison, 2015, 245). This is used as a means to address issues of land theft, Israel’s refusal to comply with international law with regards of building settlements on Palestinian land and neglecting the right of return for Palestinian refugees (Barghouti, 2011, 215). Under the initiation of Omar Barghouti, one of the founders of this movement, Palestinian civil society groups worldwide, have opted to use this form of non-violence to place economic and socio-cultural forms of global pressure as an attempt to have Israel comply with international law (Barghouti, 2011, 50). The aim of this paper is to explain the expansion and growth of the BDS movement by using political process theories and theories of contentious politics to explain power degradation of Israel’s legitimacy as a democratic and Jewish state (Barghouti, 2011, 10).