An Israeli ‘Apartheid Wall’ at Duke University in 2019. Photo: Amy Rosenthal.

The boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) movement hinders peace in the Middle East and keeps Palestinians down, human rights activist Bassem Eid told students at Duke University on Sunday.

As first reported by The Duke Chronicle, Eid, a Palestinian native and chairman of The Center for Near East Policy Research, was invited to the university by Students Supporting Israel (SSI), which last year survived an attempted cancellation that began when former Duke Student Government (DSG) president Christina Wang vetoed legislation to grant the club official recognition.

During the event at Zener Auditorium, Eid accused progressive organizations, including Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), of leveraging the Palestinian plight to aggrandize and enrich themselves, charging that “they are using us.”

“Those people live in their warm houses, you know, in Virginia, Los Angeles, in the UK, and they have no problem from time to time to give a speech on behalf of Palestinians,” he said. “The BDS movement is people who used to be jobless and they found a job forever. If the Israeli-Palestine conflict is solved, all of the BDS members will be jobless and refugees.”

Eid also said that BDS’s campaigns to pressure Israeli companies into leaving the West Bank have deprived Palestinians of much needed economic growth. The Abraham Accords, he argued, are “very important” for realigning priorities in the region and meeting the needs of Palestinians “who are seeking dignity rather than identity.”

“What do Palestinians benefit from BDS? Zero,” he continued. “Several factories in Israel have been closed, thousands of Palestinians have been thrown out from their job.”

Eid’s talk at Duke was the third for a speaking tour that began earlier this month. On September 13, he spoke at American University’s (AU) School of International Service, where he discussed the apparent insolubility of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and what Israel’s rapprochement with its Arab neighbors could mean for the future.

“I think that the Israelis and Palestinians became experts on how to manage conflicts rather than to solve conflicts,” he said. “This is unfortunately what the international community already taught us — how to manage rather than solve.”

He continued, “The United Arab Emirates is going to invest in Israel. And of course, the Palestinians — we benefit from that. What’s wrong with that?”

In an interview with American University’s student daily, The Eagle, Tamara Listenberg, president of AU Students Supporting Israel said that Eid’s event is the latest reason the group is becoming an object of “attention and fire” on campus.

“But that’s not really our point,” she continued. “We’re not here to you know, like throw shade at people…we’re really just looking — and it’s funny to say this — to like coexist on campus.”

Listenberg added that SSI does not “want people to be afraid of us just because we have Israel in our name.”