Rights-Based Discourse as a Palestinian Strategy | iNSS

The discourse on Palestinian rights, intent on reframing the national conflict with Israel as a struggle for self-determination of all Palestinians wherever they may be, is designed to put pressure on Israel to change its policy on the Palestinian issue and enshrine the rights of Palestinians within whatever national solution is reached. While leaders of the BDS campaign in the Palestinian arena tried to recruit supporters for more than a decade by promoting a rights-based discourse, in the last two years Palestinian research institutes and think tanks have also begun to emphasize the need to formulate a new national strategy based on this discourse. The claim is that a rights-based discourse would give the Palestinians advantages they currently do not have. This strategy, if realized, adopted, and applied, could have profound ramifications for both Israel and the Palestinian Authority.