Civil Society and Palestine: The Growing Power of the Ordinary (Ramzy Baroud)

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Ramzy Baroud -- World News Trust

Mar. 16, 2011 -- The global boycott movement (BDS) and other related campaigns were aimed at exposing Israeli transgressions against the Palestinian people and galvanizing international solidarity.

What is so uplifting to see now is how their achievements have far surpassed these initial aims. The campaigns have animated, accentuated and actually legitimized Palestinian civil society -- a notion that long stood outside the official paradigm acceptable to Israel, and which had very little space within the restrictive realm of the Palestinian Authority (PA).


Now civil society has been incorporated into the overall political equation as a leading factor in the Palestinian struggle for rights and freedom. The society is also increasingly filling the vacuum created by the PA’s localization of the Palestinian struggle, and Israel’s constant attempt at downgrading any genuine alternative to the PA’s leadership.


The articulation of the rise of Palestinian civil society came loud and clear July 9, 2005, when 171 Palestinian civil society organizations representing Palestinians living in the occupied territories, Israel, and the Diaspora called “upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era.”

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