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A few weeks ago, I spoke on the phone with , a Palestinian community activist and land defender from , an area in the occupied West Bank where 8 Palestinian villages are slated for demolition by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). Sami has been updating me on the situation since May, when an Israeli court military plans to expel thousands of Palestinians from their ancestral lands.

When I asked what solidarity activists in the UK should be doing to Palestinians resisting ethnic cleansing, Sami turned his phone around to show me the scene of a demolition that had taken place in the previous days, and delivered a message as clear as day: “BDS the.”

The demolitions in Masafer Yatta began shortly after the court ruling in May, but instead of doing them all at once, Sami described to me how Israeli forces are pacing them , likely to avoid a spectacle that might attract international attention.

Every week, residents of Masafer Yatta wait for the bulldozers to arrive, with the logos of JCB, Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI), and Volvo apparent on the machinery that tears into their homes, schools, community centres, livestock shelters and water supplies.  

The call to respond to this by focusing on corporations with business in Britain, in this case bulldozer manufacturers, is part of the larger strategy proposed in 2005 by over 170 Palestinian civil society groups.

Seventeen years ago this month, they released a calling on grassroots movements and people of conscience around the world to boycott and divest from companies involved in Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, and to push for sanctions on the state of Israel to help bring down apartheid.

The (BDS) call outlines a campaign rationale and strategy for international activists, outlining a specific set of tactics, targets, and goals. BDS tactics have been used before, both by the Palestinian liberation movement as well as by others, like the in South Africa which is referenced as an inspiration in the BDS call. 

Whilst BDS wasn’t new as a set of tactics, the 2005 BDS call brought a clarity and direction to the solidarity movement that was beginning to wane, especially in the aftermath of the disastrous Oslo Accords. The demands of the movement were already consensus in the Palestinian liberation movement, but BDS provided a new ambition in its reach. 

It sets out simply to say that the oppression of the Palestinian people is sustained by corporations and governments around the world, and in order to support the Palestinian people in their struggle, international activists can do their part by focusing on this element.

Seventeen years after the BDS call in 2005, the movement has grown from strength to strength, including here in Britain led by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign along with movement partners. Through strategic and collective organising, we have pushed Veolia to back out of its plans to support the Jerusalem light rail; forced G4S to abandon its Israeli subsidiary which had been servicing the jails holding Palestinian political prisoners; and compelled HSBC, Britain’s largest bank, to , one of Israel’s largest weapons manufacturers.

Dozens of democratic organisations have endorsed the use of BDS tactics, including many of PSC’s affiliated trade unions, representing millions of workers between them. Currently, PSC branches and our trade union partners around the country are pressing their local councils to from a range of companies complicit in Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, including the bulldozer companies operating in Masafer Yatta.

But with these steps forward lie more challenges ahead. Recognising its power of growing solidarity, Israel has on the BDS movement, and its international allies have followed suit. Across the US and Europe, states have passed laws or implemented policies to in various ways, and now the UK government has pledged to do the same, a plan that has been floated for years but is taking real shape now as I write this.

The government has set the stage for its by a wave of repressive legislation—from the Policing Bill, to the Nationality and Borders Bill, the threats to the Human Rights Act, and more, the anti-boycott bill fits neatly into a government agenda intent on stripping away human rights and people power.

But the UK government may have overplayed its hand this time, and despite its continuous efforts to chill, scare, and demonise solidarity, our movement continues to grow. A few years ago in 2015, when the Conservative Party first started to float the idea of anti-BDS legislation, we struggled to convince anyone outside of our usual close allies that they should care.

This time, we’ve assembled a coalition of over who have already committed to opposing the bill when it lands, including trade unions, faith-based institutions, climate justice organisations, anti-militarism and anti-war groups, human rights groups, community organisations, and more.

These groups know that Palestine solidarity work may be the initial target of the impending bill, but it was not only Palestinian rights that brought so many groups to the table. We’ve seen a similar set of laws in the US initially aimed at the BDS movement that are now used as a template to take down focused on the and campaigns against manufacturers.

Most recently, right-wing American legislators are planning to use an anti-boycott bill as a model to that cover travel costs for women seeking abortions. It's abundantly clear that attacks on the BDS movement are not only attacks on our ability to campaign in support of justice for Palestine, but also to curb a wide range of other international solidarity and social justice movements.

We have a ahead of us, but we must keep our eyes on the reason we do this work in the first place. As more videos stream in of bulldozers rolling into Masafer Yatta, our work for divestment continues.

As Sami made clear, we know that the best way to fight attempts to crush our solidarity is to make our BDS campaigns so popular that the government’s demonisation of our movement will only spread our just cause further.