The recent proposal by the Socialist Left Party in Norway to boycott Israeli products has sparked debate. A rational analysis of the situation should cover two questions: Do Israeli human rights violations warrant an economic boycott? and can such a boycott end these violations?

Although Israel’s human rights violations have been addressed by several rights groups, its real record on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory is not well known. This is mainly due to the great efforts by Israel’s public relations industry as well as its use of intimidation tactics, such as labeling critics of Israeli policies anti-Semitic.

However, international human rights organizations have documented the series of Israeli rights violations against the Palestinians, describing them as amounting to the level of war crimes and crimes against humanity. These include; Illegal killings.

While the media focuses on the attacks by the Palestinian resistance against Israeli targets, it rarely mentions Israel’s record of killing civilians.

According to recent figures by the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B'Tselem), Israeli occupation forces have killed 3,386 Palestinians since September 2000, of whom 1,008 were labeled by Israel as fighters. On the other hand, only 992 Israelis died in the same period, of whom 309 were combatants. These figures clearly show that three times more Palestinian civilians than Israelis have been killed. The Israeli government claims that there is a huge difference between targeting civilians and inadvertently killing them. But B'Tselem disputes this claim; "When so many civilians have been killed and wounded, the lack of intent makes no difference. Israel remains responsible." Moreover, Amnesty International reports that "many" Palestinians have not been accidentally killed but "deliberately targeted," while the award-winning New York Times journalist Chris Hedges reports that Israeli occupation forces “entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport." -----Torture------

In recent months, Amnesty International denounced Israel's unwillingness to stop settlers’ violence against Palestinians; Human Rights Watch accused Israel of failing to protect Palestinian civilians from unlawful attacks by Israeli occupation forces and the European Union criticized Israel's violations of the rights of 200,000 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem. According to Amnesty, Israel became in 1987 “the only country in the world to have effectively legalized torture.” The rights group says that "From 1967, the Israeli security services have routinely tortured Palestinian political suspects in the Occupied Territories." A B'Tselem report also shows that eighty-five percent of Palestinians questioned by Israeli security agents were subjected to "methods constituting torture.” Human Rights Watch has already estimated a decade ago that "the number of Palestinians tortured or severely ill-treated" was "in the tens of thousands - a number that becomes especially significant when it is remembered that the universe of adult and adolescent male Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza is under three-quarters of one million."

Despite a 1999 ruling by the Israeli Supreme Court banning torture, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel reported in 2003 that Israeli occupation forces continued to torture Palestinians in a "methodical and routine" fashion. Also a 2001 B'Tselem report concluded that Israeli security forces often applied "severe torture" to "Palestinian minors." -------House demolitions--------- "Israel has implemented a policy of mass demolition of Palestinian houses in the Occupied Territories," B'Tselem says, and since September 2000 "it has destroyed some 4,170 Palestinian homes."

The Israeli government uses house demolitions as a form of collective punishment. It also demolishes thousands of Palestinian homes on a regular basis, claiming that they lack building permits. According to Amnesty, which describes Israel's destruction of Palestinian homes as "war crimes", the reason behind such demolitions is to maximize the area available for Jewish settlers: "Palestinians are targeted for no other reason than they are Palestinians." The Israeli government also destroys hundreds of homes, citing security reasons, but a Human Rights Watch report on Gaza states that "the pattern of destruction strongly suggests that Israeli forces demolished homes wholesale, regardless of whether they posed a specific threat." Also Amnesty said that "Israel's extensive destruction of homes and properties throughout the West Bank and Gaza is not justified by military necessity," and that "Some of these acts of destruction amount to grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention and are war crimes." --------Movement restrictions------

A recent B’Tselem report strongly condemned Israel’s illegal separation barrier and Israel’s strict restrictions on Palestinian movement. It said that the West Bank barrier will directly affect that lives of 490,000 Palestinians.

By building this illegal wall deep inside the West Bank, Israel will annex the most productive land and water resources as well as East Jerusalem, which Palestinians want as a capital for their future state.

The separation barrier will also cut the West Bank in two. Human rights groups and Palestinian officials accuse Israel of grabbing more of Palestinian lands to annex illegal Jewish settlements into Israel.

Recently, Israel's Justice Minister publicly admitted that the barrier will serve as "the future border of the state of Israel." B’Tselem also reported that Israel currently has 27 permanent checkpoints inside the West Bank, as well as 12 in Hebron.

The world focused on the so-called Israel withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, while in fact it is “an instrument for Israel’s continued annexation of West Bank land and the physical integration of that land into Israel", according to an article by Dr. Sara Roy of Harvard University. "Israel has created in the Occupied Territories a regime of separation based on discrimination, applying two separate systems of law in the same area and basing the rights of individuals on their nationality," B'Tselem said in a report. "This regime is the only one of its kind in the world, and is reminiscent of distasteful regimes from the past, such as the apartheid regime in South Africa."

If singling out South Africa for an international economic boycott was defensible, it would seem equally defensible to single out Israel, which resembles the apartheid regime.

The burden now falls on individual states that want to respect their obligations under international law. In a bold move, the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch recently called on the U.S. government to reduce its financial aid to Israel until it ends it illegal policies in the occupied territories.

An economic boycott is a fair decision to pressure Israel. It is a nonviolent tactic that could achieve a just and lasting settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; a move that Israel cannot label anti-Semitic.