Draw a line at the Green Line: Israel is legitimate. The settlements aren’t. A policy statement from Meretz USA

As the public debate surrounding the Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) movement gathers steam, Meretz USA calls on all supporters of peace between Israel and Palestine to reinforce the distinction between the legitimacy of Israel as a sovereign state and the illegitimacy of the settlements created by Israel in the West Bank. We say: Draw a line at the Green Line.

To date, neither of the two main antagonists in the BDS debate - the "Global BDS Movement" and the traditional leadership of the organized American Jewish community - has adopted such an approach.

Framing the Israel-Palestine conflict as one between pure ‘good' and pure ‘evil', the BDS movement suggests that to be a defender of the Palestinians, one must also be an enemy of Israel.

Clearly, not every supporter of an initiative involving boycott, divestment or sanctions wishes to bring about Israel's demise. The BDS movement has gained the support of many well-intentioned individuals who are frustrated over the unending occupation and simply want to ‘do something' to end it.

But the actions and positions of the organized BDS movement indicate that its strategy is to build on legitimate international opposition to the occupation and settlements in order to undermine Israel's independent existence.

To this end, the Global BDS Movement singles out Israel for blame, clings to a literal interpretation of the ‘right of return' for Palestinian refugees, and loudly abstains from referring to a two-state solution or to Israel's legitimate existence within internationally recognized borders. Its ultimate goal isn't two states - it's one.

As a result, the BDS movement is making itself an enemy of equitable compromise, sustainable peace and eventual reconciliation.

For its part, the organized Jewish community has done two generations of disservice to Israel by blindly supporting the decades-long policy of Israeli governments to fill the occupied West Bank with hundreds of thousands of Jewish Israeli settlers.

With the support of many well-meaning but misdirected American Jews, Israel designed and implemented a settlement program whose fundamental illegitimacy provides fuel for those who would delegitimize Israel as a whole, while destroying the necessary conditions on the ground for a two-state solution.

Although many members of the Jewish leadership privately recognize the illogic and even illegitimacy of Israel's settlements, they have sadly acquiesced to the demand of successive Israeli governments that the American Jewish community never criticize even the most self-destructive of Jerusalem's policies.

There is an urgent need, therefore, to re-center the BDS debate and to anchor the question of political legitimacy that it raises on the 1967 pre-war border.

Supporters of peace must defend the Green Line from all those who would eradicate it. Efforts to erode that line - by both detractors and supporters of Israel - reduce the chances for agreement, prolong the occupation, and undermine Israel's right to exist in peace and security.

All those who refuse to recognize the Green Line as the political basis for legitimacy and the geographic basis for compromise (notwithstanding the likelihood that land swaps and border modifications will be part of a future negotiated agreement) are contributing to the delegitimization of Israel, whether by design or in practice.