The evolution of the discourse on the Arab boycott of Israel

Abstract

The story of the Arab boycott of Israel is telling not only of how the discourse on boycott itself has changed but is also telling about changes in the broader question of Palestine. The main research question which this thesis has attempted to answer is how the discourse on the Arab boycott of Israel has changed from when it was first launched in 1945 by the Arab league until the present day when they are three actors calling for the boycott: the Arab league, the Palestinian authority (PA), and BDS? I was interested not only in how the discourse on boycott reflects how each actor represents the question of Palestine but also how the discourse helped reproduce and challenge this representation. As such this thesis has employed critical discourse analysis, to explore the relationship between discourse and the social or political structure dialectically, whereby discourse not only reflects reality, but also helps shape it. In the early Arab league discourse specifically in the 1950s and 1960s, Arabism was the underlying ideology, whereby the boycott was placed as part of a wider Arab war against Zionism. The 1967 defeat, and the effect that has had on Arabism, the ideology which had once not only given the boycott conceptual meaning but also made it materially effective, was a watershed in the Arab league boycott. The second blow for the boycott came in the early 1990s with the beginning of the ‘peace era’ and the neoliberal prescriptions that had carried, which were conceptually at odds with boycotts. The pa boycott, on the other hand, needs to be understood within the wider pa statehood program, whereby both are an attempt by the PA to respond to the failure of the peace process amid suffering a legitimacy crisis. The pa boycott reproduces the same peace process discourse with its emphasis on the centrality of the settlements and the two state solution. BDS is also attempting to respond to the failure of the peace process, it however positions itself in direct opposition to the peace process discours