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Jerusalem / AFP
When word spread that the Ahava cosmetics firm would move its factory from the occupied West Bank, it set off alarm bells among Israelis for reasons nothing to do with its products.
There were suspicions that Ahava, which sells Dead Sea minerals and mud around the world, had made the decision because of mounting pressure to shift its operations from the Palestinian territory.
The beauty products company said in a statement that it would “establish an additional plant” inside Israel, but has yet to explicitly confirm the West Bank factory will close.
Yet activists are seeing it as a victory for their campaign known by the initials BDS—or Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions—that calls for a boycott of Israel until it withdraws from the occupied territories.
The campaign is a decade old, but recent moves like Ahava’s have raised the question of whether it has now gained steady momentum.
It has become an increasingly global fight, with skirmishes taking place not only in the West Bank but in courtrooms, parliaments and university campuses in New York, Paris and London.
Supporters of the campaign point to past moves by companies like SodaStream, which pulled out of the West Bank in September 2015, and British-Danish security giant G4S, which will leave Israel altogether.
But at the same time, some companies in the West Bank are proudly expanding, defying pressure not only from BDS but also the European Union, which recently began requiring products from Israeli-occupied territory to be labelled.
Israel is not taking BDS lightly, with officials calling it a “strategic threat” and budgeting 118 million shekels ($31 million) to fight it this year. Both sides recently held strategy conferences and, perhaps unsurprisingly, both claim to be winning.
Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan told the pro-Israeli conference his government was seeking to “be able to thwart (criticism) in real time and even be one step ahead of BDS.”
BDS has sought to use the anti-apartheid campaign in South Africa in the 1980s as an example. Israelis and others however accuse it of going beyond legitimate criticism into anti-Semitism, claims campaigners deny.
“They can’t respond in the traditional way… to accuse of being terrorists or funded by terrorists. It is easy for the world to see this is not true,” Jamal Juma, a member of the BDS executive committee in Ramallah, said.