Fatah jumps on the sinking BDS ship

During these past few months, BDS has jumped the shark.

Last month's "Israel Apartheid Week" was a bust; the tide on college campuses is turning against the Israel-hating fanatics, a major campaign to stop The Rolling Stones and Neil Young from playing in Israel failed miserably, the Sodastream/Scarlett Johansson episode blew up in BDSers' faces, and the major players who keep pushing BDS have found themselves more marginalized. Even Israel's most strident critics are also criticizing BDS fanatics.  Hell, even Islamic Jihad wants to do business with Israel.

Up until now, the PA leadership has been against BDS as well.

But the same leaders who realized 50 years too late that they should have accepted the 1947 partition plan, with their exquisite sense of timing, may be about to board the BDS ship - right when it is starting to sink.

From Middle East Monitor:

Mohammed Shtayyeh, a member of Fatah's Executive Committee, has called for a full local, regional and international economic boycott of Israel to oblige it to withdraw from the occupied Palestinians territories.

"Israel has to pay the price for its occupation in order to feel its burden," he said while delivering a speech at a conference held to support the Palestinian crops against settlement food production in the local market.

Since the Palestinian and Israeli economies are interrelated, Shtayyeh called upon the Palestinian Authority leadership to take tangible steps regarding the boycott. "It is not possible for us to call for the world to boycott Israel, while our annual imports from Israel are worth $5 billion," he said.

This means that, "We import 90 per cent of our needs from Israel." He also said that 70 per cent of Palestinian exports go to Israel.

Shtayyeh gave examples of other boycotts from recent history, such as Indians who boycotted British goods, African Americans who boycotted buses in Montgomery in the state of Alabama, as well as the Arab boycott of Israel during the 1987 Intifada.

For the time being, Shtayyeh called for spreading awareness among Arab businessmen who invest in Israel without knowing that it harms Palestinian interests. He said that there are 596 international firms, including many owned by Arabs, investing in Israel.

He also hailed the popular international efforts in raising the tactic of boycott. "This has started to give positive responses," he said. "Dozens of European and American firms have announced their boycott of Israel," adding that, "a large number of artists have refrained from performing in Israel."

Shtayyeh is getting his news from the BDS dinosaur sites. Indeed, in 2010, the Pixies canceled their show in Israel as a protest of Israeli policies, in what was hailed as a major BDS victory.

This year, they are playing in Israel.

Timing is everything, but since Fatah leaders refuse to read any news from sources that contradict what they want to believe, they are always going to be a few years behind in seeing what is happening right in front of them.