Pappe is well known for his historical research into the "Naqba" the Palestinian perception of the 1948/49 Israeli Independence war. Among other historians Pappe opened up discourse in the Israeli academia and subsequently schools and media for a "post-Zionist" reading of the war. While in Israel the independence war history was and still is generally told as the tale of a small and young nation that is being attacked by all its neighbouring countries and heroically wins, for the Palestinians the history of the war is a story of expulsion from their homeland by superior colonial conquerors who subsequently appropriated their land to call it a Jewish homeland.
The two readings of the conflict lay foundation to the core nationalist conflict in the Middle East and - as some say - in the world. Yet it was Pappe who thankfully pointed out in the talk yesterday, that with the huge attention spent on the conflict other serious global issues often get neglected. He expressed that it was always painful to talk about the conflict, which he has done for some 35 years.
This might have to do with the significant frustrations he and other people of the Israeli peace camp must have gone through since the early nineties, when for some years the Israeli discourse broadly opened up for a recognition of the Palestinian side of the story. Obviously a mutual recognition of the respective histories of the people is the precondition of any hope for peace.
The frustration about the failure of the peace process and the ever deteriorating situation in the Middle East since can be regarded as a possible excuse when Pappe looks for but one guilty party and singles it out as what he calls the "Israeli Zionist elite". His position is that this elite, which stretches for him from the far right greater Israel settler movement to the left Zionists pro peace party Meretz and the old peace movement has essentially one and only one aim: to get away with as much as land as possible while limiting the ability of Palestinians to create and realize their statehood in a satisfying way. This is why he accused the whole Israeli elite to be not a partner for peace, but an obstacle to peace. Therefore there will always only be but one outcome in relation to the Palestinians, a situation of apartheid, an apartheid as he said that was worse than the on in South-Africa.

Pappe therefore supports the demand of Palestinian solidarity groups to boycott Israel, a call that was briefly adopted by the British Association of University Teachers (AUT) last year April
 http://www.aut.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=1201
when it called for an academic boycott of two universities in Israel. Ironically, among the boycotted universities was Pappe's own university in Haifa where he holds lifelong tenure in history. One of the reasons given for the boycott was AUT's claim that Pappe's position in the university was under thread because of his political and historical stance. These allegations against the university were later withdrawn. Doubts were then raised about the general effectiveness of boycott, especially in regards to the question why a society (or in this case two universities), comprising a variety of different opinions and attitudes should be collectively punished for a geopolitical situation that was hardly a matter of their individual influence. Others criticised the boycott call to be anti-Semitic, as it singled out Israel as the problem: No one suggested boycotting Russia for their colonial policies in the Caucasus, no one called for a boycott of China, Morocco or Iran for their respective colonial and imperialist policies in Tibet, Western Sahara and Southern Iraq.
Reasonably the boycott call by the AUT was withdrawn a month later.
 http://www.aut.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=1235
Many hoped that boycott was therefore off the agenda.
Pappe's support for a boycott call against Israel is then surprising and he didn't succeed in presenting a convincing argument for it. A nationalist boycott will make it more difficult for people to break out of the nationalist camp and start to engage in people to people projects. The comparison with South Afirca is not correct, as in South Africa it was never about competing nationalisms. From a traditional political perspective one can only support the political forces within both societies that are willing to negotiate. To put the whole Israeli political elite in one box doesn't help, but makes things worse as it equals the fundamentalist position that demands the end of the Israeli existance as a precondition for peace.
It is always important to stress that there are alternatives in Israel and there is the right to express them. Also Pappe pointed this out, when he referred to the experience he made living in the Galilee area of northern Israel where Arabs and Jews lived together in a new co-operative manner and work together in various projects. It was those projects that he draws his hope from he said that the deadlock of national interest on the part of the Israeli elite would be overcome. That sounded nice and like a way forward. We certainly shouldn't rely on governments to sort out international peace. Instead grass roots connections and information across nationalist camps and borders needs to be the approach to break out of nationalist conflicts.
More Information:
Indymedia Israel  https://israel.indymedia.org/
International Middle East Media Centre  http://www.imemc.org/