Dr. Einat Wilf, Israeli political scientist, management consultant and former MK. Photo: WikiCommons.

Tuesday’s Palestinian Authority requests to join various international bodies are indicative of a new mode of warfare against Israel in line with the international delegitimization and Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, former Israeli Knesset member, Senior Fellow with the Jewish People Policy Institute and Adjunct Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Einat Wilf, said.

Her remarks were made during a conference call organized by advocacy group The Israel Project on Wednesday.

According to Wilf, the PA’s move symbolizes that it is interested in “renewing the war and renewing the battlefield through the UN.”

For Wilf, this new stance of non-violent warfare has not been adopted because the Arab world is turning to pacifism.

“Even though the means is not violent, it does not say anything about the end,” she said. “The end remains the same as it has always been, which is to present Israel and the idea of Israel as not legitimate. This is merely one more arena in which this is taking place.”

In adopting “statelike elements” at the UN, Wilf said that the PA is seeking to retain both sovereign and exile status.

“If the Palestinians were to go all the way with their claims [of a state], no one could accept that someone living in Ramallah or Gaza is a Palestinian refugee, but by gaining elements of statehood at the UN without claiming to be an actual state, you can still claim to be a refugee.”

Wilf hopes that in the long term, Israel will respond to the PA’s unilateral moves at the UN by devoting more resources to combat the deligitmization movement, saying “we will need a lot of people, legal scholars, foreign policy people to combat these issues.”

The PA’s application on Tuesday to 15 international bodies came after ongoing U.S. backed peace talks with Israel stalled when the PA declined to extend a self imposed April deadline.

The bodies that the PA applied to were, The Four Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 and the First Additional Protocol, The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, The Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in armed conflict, The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, The Hague Convention (IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its annex: Regulations Concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land, The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, The United Nations Convention against Corruption, The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, The International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.