The changing face of Palestinian leadership : the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement : a thesis presented in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Politics at Massey University,Turitea, New Zealand
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Date
2014
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Massey University
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Abstract
The face of Palestinian leadership has developed and diversified greatly since the British
Mandate period, with many groups claiming representation of the Palestinian people and
the national movement. The unresolved matter of Palestinian leadership is central to Israeli
occupation and any resolution. Established in 2005, the development and success of the
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement represents a new chapter in
Palestinian leadership building upon Palestine’s established history of popular resistance.
This thesis examines the effects of the BDS movement on the direction and strength of
Palestinian leadership and the Palestinian national movement. Using a distributed
leadership framework, the research analyses how the grassroots, transnational nature of
the BDS movement has modernised and globalised the Palestinian struggle. The difficult
political environment of the occupation has caused formal Palestinian leadership to be
greatly compromised through the restrictions tied to the Oslo Accords and formal peace
process. The organisational structure of the BDS movement allows it to operate outside of
these realms, counter-positioning itself against the failed US-led diplomacy. The thesis
questions the use of the common comparison of BDS with the anti-apartheid movement in
South Africa; the wider politics of the situation and relationships between Palestinian
leadership bodies differs vastly from those of apartheid South Africa. The comparative
thread throughout the research is two-fold: an objective comparison of the BDS movement
with anti-apartheid movement in South Africa; and an analysis of BDS’s own use of the
comparison as a strategic and organisational tool. The recent rise of protest movements
present an alternative to formal political institutions. The BDS movement represents a
broader trend in political leadership as the advent of new media has shifted an element of
power into grassroots mass movements. This thesis finds that the BDS movement has
reintroduced grassroots resistance and leadership to the Palestinian political system. Its
distributed leadership model has provided an alternative outlet that circumvents the
restrictive formal political process. However, as the BDS movement does not seek the
institutionalised power that any future Palestinian state requires, formal Palestinian
leadership must incorporate the movement’s grassroots elements traditional to Palestine.
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Keywords
Palestinian leadership, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), Palestine, Palestinian resistance, Protest movements