Association Belgo-Palestinienne (ABP)

Activities

• ABP’s stated mission includes:
  • “Informing and mobilizing public opinion, civil society organizations, and media;”
  • “(Lobbying) elected representative in local, regional, national and European institutions;”
  • “Moral, material, and human resource support to Palestinian organizations.”
• ABP regularly accuses Israel of committing “apartheid,” calling for “the end of the occupation.”
• ABP condemns Israeli actions taken in response to security threats, calling for the “liberation of all political prisoners” and the “dismantlement of all colonies and the separation wall,” omitting the context of violence or terrorism under which arrests are made and the security wall was built.
• Rhetoric includes a call for a Palestinian “right of return,” which, if implemented, would effectually mean the elimination of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people.
• In contradiction with Belgian foreign policy that supports a two-state framework, ABP refers to this framework as a “hypothesis.”
• ABP calls for the “condemnation of Israel for war crimes and crimes against humanity as denounced by the Russel Tribunal on Palestine (2013).” (Emphasis added.)
  • The tribunal uses a legal façade to create an image of neutrality and credibility, and to accuse Israel of “apartheid,” “war crimes,” “crimes against humanity,” and “genocide.”
• ABP blames Israel alone for the conflict, and considers “the political objective of the Zionist movement, from the outset and in practice, to be the bearer of injustice against the Palestinian people.”

BDS Activities

• ABP is active in discriminatory BDS campaigns against Israel.
• ABP states that “in regards with the repeated diplomatic failures…the boycott of Israeli products, from the colonies or not, is the only alternative…to force Israel to respect the international law.”
• ABP “Denounces the guilt of states and companies that enable Israel to violate international law.”
• In 2015, after SodaStream moved its factory from the West Bank to the Southern Israel Bedouin city of Rahat, ABP launched its “Stop Sodastream” campaign against “the invasion of the soda machine ‘Made in Israel,’.” The campaign utilizes Holocaust rhetoric, describing Rahat as a “ghetto.”
• ABP, together with FIDH and the Platform of French NGOs for Palestine among others, partnered in creating the “Made in Illegality” campaign in Belgium. The campaign calls upon the Belgian government to end its economic relations with Israeli settlements. The campaign’s demands include banning Belgian import of all “settlement products,” discouraging Belgian companies “from investing in settlements,” and preparing information for travelers “to ensure that they avoid supporting companies and tourist sites that are located in the settlements.”
• Called for the suspension of the European Union-Israel Association Agreement, together with 300 other civil society organizations.
• In 2012, ABP called for the boycott of the Israeli pharmaceutical company TEVA, stating that the Israeli government uses the company to “‘white’ its reputation, faded by its policy of occupation and of colonization.” ABP rationalizes its call to boycott the pharmaceutical company by claiming that the “occupation policy has consequences on the health of the Palestinians.”

Other Advocacy Activities

• ABPs “AquiLe Tour” campaign focuses on advocating for the release of individuals arrested under what it claims are “administrative detentions,” ignoring any context of violence and terrorism. ABP worked with the Belgian government body Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles on this campaign, and states that “this Israeli policy aims at breaking all resistance of the Palestinian people…and unravels the Palestinian familial and social structure.” ABP cites reports from international organizations (without naming the reports or organizations) claiming they confirm “that Israel uses the administrative detention as a mean of collective punition.”
• ABP publishes bulletins, composed of articles written by personalities such as Pierre Galand (ABP’s president), Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, and terrorist Marwan Barghouti.
• ABP asserts that the decisions of the Israeli High Court of Justice regarding the relocation of Umm Al-Hiran (Negev) and Susiya (Area C) aim to “clean ethnically the region and to judaize it.”
• Joelle Maison, Deputy of the Belgian Government body Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, has questioned the activities and government support of ABP. She has described ABP’s bulletins as including “choking expressions such as ‘pogrom’ and ‘ apartheid…’genocide’…not favoring intercultural dialogue and don’t contribute to pacify relations between Arab and Jewish people” and “Proselyte, Manichean, aiming at removing all legitimacy of the state of Israel.” She added that “its content seems… not compatible with imperatives of the living-together and the intercultural dialogue.”

Pierre Galand

• Pierre Galand has been president of ABP since 1986, and is also the President of ECCP (a Brussels-based association of NGOs cooperating with the UN Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People), the general coordinator of the Russel Tribunal, the former head of Oxfam-Belgium (one of the leaders in the demonization campaign against Israel), and is a former Belgian Senator.
• Galand is a prominent figure in BDS and lawfare campaigns against Israel.
• Galand has been involved in promoting BDS campaigns in Belgium since 2005 (see NGO Monitor’s report, “European Coordinating Committee of NGOs [ECCP] Meeting to Promote Boycotts and Divestment.”)
• Galand was a presenter at the 2009 UN Committee of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People NGO conference, where he mentioned that he and his colleagues were planning a “Russell Tribunal” against Israel. Such fringe tribunals found the US guilty of “war crimes” in the 1970s, in the 1991 Operation Desert Storm, and the 2003 Iraq War.
• In 2002, Galand was expelled by the Israeli authorities, together with seven other Belgian activists, under suspicion that they would “likely [] disturb the peace.”
• In 2015, Galand accused the Israeli government of applying “to the West Bank the same deadly therapy already used in Gaza in 2009 and 2014.”
• In an April 2016 editorial on ABP’s website, “The dehumanization of the Palestinians,” Galand refers to Gaza as a “big concentration camp” and accuses the “Israeli occupation forces” of kidnapping “1000 children in the last two months of 2015,” without citing any sources for such a claim.