Tomorrow, Congress will go on its summer recess and it is an ideal opportunity for you to arrange district appointments with your Representative and Senators while they are home from Washington.  Last Friday, during CMEP Staff and Board Hill visits, key staff aides asked us to remind all of you of how important your advocacy, as American Christians that care about peace in the Holy Land, is to your members of Congress.  One suggestion we received was to have constituents partner with church leadership when they go on Congressional visits.  Another aide advised us that an effective advocacy strategy is actually postage-mailed letters that are personal, balanced and well-reasoned (we will be advising you in the months ahead on how to vary your advocacy through phone, email and mail).  Just 5 of these letters could make the difference, he said! 

So as we continue to wilt here in the Washington humidity, we hope you will make your voices heard around the country as Americans who believe that U.S. engagement is crucial to a just and peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  If you are able to arrange a meeting in your district, email julie@cmep.org for background materials and talking points.   

Below, I have included two articles discussing recent developments and positive shifts in Congress and U.S. policy from Rafi Dajani of the American Taskforce on Palestine and M.J. Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Forum (Ziad Asali of ATPF and M.J. spoke at Advocacy Days in March).  As Rafi explains, “the United States has started a paradigm shift in its policy: Washington increasingly understands that a viable, contiguous and independent Palestinian state that satisfies the national aspirations of the Palestinian people is critical to U.S. national interests and foreign policy goals in the Middle East.”  Their analysis emphasizes the growing impact that grassroots advocacy can have on reinforcing constructive actions that policy-makers are taking.  

Guidance on making appointments

Information on district offices

PROFIT FROM THE U.S. SHIFT ON PALESTINE
By Raafat Dajani
Daily Star, Commentary (Lebanon)
July 23, 2005

The conventional wisdom among many observers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that time is fast running out - if it has not already run out - on the prospect of a two-state solution. The main reasons are Israel's accelerating the creation of facts on the ground and perceived U.S. support for this process. A closer look, however, reveals that, in parallel, the United States has started a paradigm shift in its policy: Washington increasingly understands that a viable, contiguous and
independent Palestinian state that satisfies the national aspirations of the Palestinian people is critical to U.S. national interests and foreign policy goals in the Middle East.

This paradigm shift is at such an embryonic stage, however, that it can be easily aborted - deliberately by those who oppose the shift, and unwittingly by those unable to grasp the subtlety of the change, and therefore do not encourage and reinforce it.

Israel's separation barrier, land confiscation, the encirclement of East Jerusalem and continued settlement expansion all seriously threaten the viability of any potential Palestinian state. These actions, coupled with public statements made by senior Israeli officials, heighten fears that the Gaza withdrawal will be followed by a political "deep freeze" and Israel's consolidation over areas of the West Bank it intends to eventually annex.

Concurrent to this, however, have been increasing public statements from high-ranking former U.S. government officials and members of Congress that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is critical to U.S. national interests - something unheard of in the past. Two recent examples illustrate this point. Earlier this year, dozens of leading members of the foreign policy establishment, including former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Lawrence Eagleburger, and former Defense Secretary William Cohen, sent a letter to this effect to President George W. Bush.

The letter stressed "that resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict [along the lines of a two-state solution] is critical to U.S. national security interests and essential to reduce the threat posed by international terrorism." The letter has evolved into an Internet campaign to gather a million signatures to demonstrate the support of the American public.

The second example was a June 30 hearing held by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the "road map." Here again, the first sentence of committee chairman Richard Lugar's opening statement reiterated that "advancement of the two-state solution is urgently needed by the Israelis and Palestinians and is critical to U.S. success in the global war on terrorism." Lugar added that terrorists "use the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to enlist fresh recruits to conduct terrorism around the globe."

The hearing itself revealed a Senate with an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the obstacles to the road map. In addition to the expected and legitimate focus on Palestinian responsibilities in security and reform, equal emphasis was placed on Israeli actions. This included ending settlement activity, changing the route of the separation barrier, particularly around Jerusalem, and avoiding that the Gaza withdrawal become a quid pro quo for retaining significant parts of the West Bank.

Bush's views on resolving the conflict have also evolved. Standing next to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the White House Rose Garden on May 26, Bush explicitly referred to the 1949 Armistice lines as the starting point for negotiations, emphasizing that any changes must be negotiated with the Palestinians. He stressed that the route of Israel's West Bank barrier must be security-oriented, not political, and that Israel refrain from actions prejudicial to both the road map and final status negotiations. He included Jerusalem under the latter rubric for the first time.
 
The implications of this statement are profound. By making negotiations and mutual agreement a priority over unilateral acts, Bush put in context his previous references to Israel's right to hold West Bank "population centers" and make border adjustments. It meant - the administration's letters of assurance to Israel on this matter notwithstanding - that the president's position is really no different than the Clinton parameters, which the Palestinians accepted as the basis for negotiations.

Unfortunately, most Palestinian, Arab and Arab-American supporters of a two-state solution have missed the significance of this shift. Understandably jaded by relentless Israeli settlement expansion and land confiscation, they have reacted in a muted way.

The Israeli right and its supporters in the U.S., on the other hand, very quickly caught on to the significance of the shift. At a briefing held on July 28 at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington - featuring speakers such as former Israeli UN ambassador Dore Gold and former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle - there was much resistance to linking U.S. national interests with a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The main arguments put forth were that the 1949 Armistice lines would make Israel "indefensible" and that the Jordan Valley was critical to Israeli security. On terrorism, there was a complete rejection of any link between the U.S. war on terrorism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Such opposition was predictable, and proponents of this line will seek to reverse the trend in U.S. policy before it matures. Equally damaging to the prospects of the paradigm shift's gaining momentum is the failure of supporters of the two-state solution to seize the moment by sensing the drift in the Bush administration and reinforcing it. Instead, these supporters routinely attack the U.S. for its support for Israel, failing to appreciate what is changing. In this way, they are as much stuck in the past, and in a zero-sum game, as those opposed to a two-state solution.

There is no shortage of blame to go around for decades of U.S. support for Israel at the expense of the Palestinians - and that encompasses the Palestinians themselves. Altering American attitudes, though not to exclude Israel but to include Palestinian concerns as well, will not be an overnight phenomenon. But the mood is slowly turning and the reason is a new perception in Washington of U.S. national interests.

It is up to all those who support the concept of a truly secure Israel and a truly independent Palestine, living side by side in peace, to seize this moment and exert the utmost effort to help achieve it.

Raafat Dajani is executive director of the Washington-based American Task Force on Palestine

CONGRESS AWAKENS

IPF Friday

M.J. Rosenberg’s Weekly Opinion Column

Washington DC, July 22, 2005
Issue # 236

Those of us who want to see the Bush administration press hard for a permanent end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict tend not to expect much from the United States Congress. 

The reason is obvious.  Most members of Congress reflexively support measures that can be deemed anti-Arab in the wrongheaded belief that anything that is good for Arabs is bad for Israelis. 

In fact, most Congressional actions relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are not about Israel at all. The only major piece of legislation relating directly to Israel is the foreign aid package which is included in the Foreign Operations Appropriations bill. The aid package, which is essential to Israel’s security, is not controversial and is supported by virtually all House and Senate members.  It is also essentially positive in nature; it is pro-Israel not anti-anybody.  For those two reasons, the foreign aid bill does not lend itself to political grandstanding.  Those determined to use Israel for that purpose have to look elsewhere.

And they do.

Routinely, Members of Congress (usually Representatives not Senators) look to score political points by offering amendments designed to highlight their anti-Arab (and especially anti-Palestinian) bona fides.  It does not matter to them whether the amendments offered are likely to actually become law, whether they advance US policy goals or whether, if implemented, they would benefit Israel.  The point is to go on record as blasting Palestinians in the hope that pro-Israel donors and voters believe that anything that hurts Palestinians helps Israel and that they will reward them accordingly. 

Until this week, these amendments routinely garnered near unanimous support.  Those lonely House members who ventured on to the floor to point out that a particular amendment was ill-advised and could damage US and Israeli interests knew that only a handful of Members would join them in voting nay. They had to content themselves with cloakroom apologies from colleagues who conceded that their votes were wrong -- but that the President would waive the law anyway so there was no cause to risk offending pro-Israel hardliners in their district or donor base.

Wednesday’s vote was different.  One hundred House Members voted against an amendment to the Foreign Relations Authorization Act that served no purpose other than to “stick it” to the Palestinian Authority.  At a moment when the United States is working to strengthen Mahmoud Abbas, and when Israelis are fearful that Abbas will be supplanted by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, this amendment targets….Abbas.

It does this by requiring that aid to Abbas’s Palestinian Authority be delivered not up front, as is aid to Israel and other countries, but in quarterly chunks.  After each quarter, the President would have to certify that the PA has fulfilled a host of requirements, old and new, which would qualify it for their next quarterly allowance.

The requirements themselves are not objectionable although they are redundant.  And the Palestinian Authority under Abbas could fulfill them.

But splitting Palestinian aid (a paltry sum to begin with) into four pieces would undermine the Bush administration’s prime rationale for it.  The aid is designed to strengthen Mahmoud Abbas’s hands in dealing with the surging Hamas threat.  Providing the aid up front would allow Abbas to spend it on projects that would improve Palestinian conditions immediately and hopefully improve his standing with the Palestinian people.  Stretching out the aid would greatly reduce that effect.  A little here, a little there, would add up to a whole lot of nothing.

In the meantime, Hamas could win the upcoming election or even take over without elections.

This is not to say that US aid is the key determinant in Abbas’s success or failure.  It isn’t.  But it is a factor.  And that is why the amendment is so sinister.  Rather than buttress Abbas, as the Bush administration wants to do, it undermines him.  And it is Hamas that benefits. Not Israel.  Not the United States.  But Hamas, and maybe Islamic Jihad.

One hundred Representatives understood that and voted “no” – including pro-Israel stalwarts like Gary Ackerman, Howard Berman, Earl Blumenauer, Lois Capps, Barney Frank, Henry Hyde, Jim Kolbe, Nita Lowey, Nancy Pelosi, Steve Rothman and Robert Wexler.  

Frank led the opposition.  He said that President Bush needed the authority to provide aid to the Palestinians without Congressional micromanaging. “I trust George Bush on this,” he said, “It is important for him to have flexibility.” 

Blumenauer said that “in light of Israel’s impending withdrawal from Gaza, we need to preserve President Bush’s flexibility to use US assistance to promote American interests….This is one more unnecessary restriction that ties the President’s hands in pursuing peace and security.”

Capps said, "Instead of passing one-sided and punitive amendments like this one, it is incumbent upon the United States Congress to try to help both Prime Minister Sharon and President Abbas confront the extremists who seek to derail the peace process."

In the end, however the amendment prevailed 330-100 (although, fortunately, the bill it is included in is almost surely not going to become law).  But as one senior House aide put it, “if ever there was a case when the side that lost by over 200 votes really won, this was it.  Usually, these anti-Palestinian votes are political no-brainers for most Members.  The fact that 100 Members could buck this trend and do what they know in their hearts is best for the US, Israel and the Palestinians may be a small sign that Congress is waking up.”

It’s about time.

The views expressed in IPF Friday are those of MJ Rosenberg and not necessarily of Israel Policy Forum. If you have colleagues or friends who would appreciate receiving this weekly letter, send an e-mail to ipfdc@ipforumdc.org.