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An argument for a moratorium: how a South Africa-style boycott could bring about openness and equality in Israel and Palestine.

Article Excerpt
Despite furious controversy, the call to boycott I Israeli academic institutions--initiated by the British scientists Steven and Hilary Rose in April 2002 and renewed in Australia by Ghassan Hage and John Docker in May 2002--continues to grow apace. It now takes in the possibility of a wider consumer boycott of Israeli commodities and of corporations that do business with Israel. Over 270 European scientists, including ten Israelis, signed the British petition, and around 100 have signed in Australia. Late last year, scholars and students at US universities such as Berkeley, Princeton, Harvard and MIT called on universities to divest from US companies doing business in Israel. In Oxford, the Inner Bookshop has recently refused to publish works by Israeli academics until such time as Sharon's brutal oppression of the Palestinians, and Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, should cease. In an open letter to the Guardian, dated 8 August 2002, a group of prominent British Jews, including Steven Rose, renounced their `right of return' to Israel, declaring that it is morally wrong that this legal entitlement should be afforded to diaspora' Jews when those most in need of it, displaced Palestinians, are forbidden that right. In December 2002, the French University of Paris VI, quickly followed by the universities of Grenoble and Montpelier III, demanded that the European Union not renew its preferential 1995 Association Agreement with Israel, which provides for commercial concessions, as well as infrastructure and research support, for Israeli universities. Israel is held to contravene the central condition of the Agreement: that it respect human rights and democratic principles.

This spontaneous groundswell of support for a South Africa-style boycott,...

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