PepsiCo announced on Monday it is buying Israeli-owned sparkling water firm SodaStream for $3.2 billion. The deal culminates a long comeback for SodaStream, which was for years the target of an international boycott campaign and symbol of Israels treatment of Palestinians.

Since at least 2011, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement, or BDS a pro-Palestinian campaign started in 2004 that is modeled after the boycott of apartheid South Africa had called for a boycott against SodaStream for operating its main factory in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The BDS protests escalated in 2014 and caught SodaStream at a vulnerable time, when the company had just made a major marketing push into the United States including buying Super Bowl ads and hiring Scarlett Johansson to represent the company. The boycott campaign brought international pressure that forced some major European retailers to stop carrying the brand, one of its affiliate stores in the U.K. to close and Johansson to step down from her role as ambassador for the charity Oxfam.

As SodaStreams stock price fell, major American media outlets debated the ethics of buying the companys machines. SodaStream ultimately closed its West Bank factory in 2015 and moved to a larger plant in the Negev Desert, although it denied BDS played a role and said the new facility had been in the works for years.

Meanwhile, BDS activists celebrated the factorys closure as a milestone victory for the movement.

It showed that we, as activists, as consumers, do have the power to urge other consumers to boycott products, to really pressure companies to not be complicit in Israels denial of Palestinian rights, said Ramah Kudaimi, Director of Grassroots Organizing at the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights.

But soon after SodaStream closed down its West Bank facility, the controversy fell out of international headlines and any taboo around purchasing the companys machines appeared to wane. The companys stock price, which hit a low point in January 2016, increased tenfold over the next 30 months as the firm capitalized on a boom in the carbonated water industry.

Israeli media also harshly criticized the BDS movement following the controversy, specifically focusing on the hundreds of Palestinians who lost their jobs at the West Bank SodaStream facility when it closed down. The Israeli government took an especially hard line against BDS, condemning the movement as anti-Semitic and earlier this year banning members of 20 international advocacy groups from the entering the country because of their support for BDS.