House members are under pressure right now to sign a Congressional letter calling on President Obama to punish the Palestinians for going to the UN. The letter is being circulated by Reps. Ros-Lehtinen(R-FL), Berman (D-CA), Royce (R-CA), and Engel (D-NY), and is being publicly supported by AIPAC. You and I know that this is the wrong approach. The Palestinian decision to go to the UN wasn’t a rejection of a negotiated, two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Rather, it was an unequivocal validation of such a solution in the face of years of stalemate and inaction on the diplomatic track, and in the face of Israeli actions that threaten to destroy the very possibility of such a solution
The letter calls on President Obama to take the self-defeating steps of closing the PLO’s office in the U.S. and withdrawing the U.S. Consul General from Jerusalem. It also calls for a continuation of the anachronistic policy of blocking all U.S. funding for any UN agency or international forum that grants the Palestinians membership. U.S. interests are not served by cutting off contacts with the representatives of the PLO which, led by Mahmoud Abbas, has consistently committed itself to a negotiated two-state solution and has rejected violence and terror. In effect, the letter calls for a policy that makes U.S. relations with the entire international community contingent on this red-herring issue, rather than on vital U.S. national security or strategic policy interests. Such an approach is antithetical to responsible U.S. policy. This letter comes at a time when the Netanyahu government is taking concrete steps – like the approval of massive settlement construction and the promotion of the two-state-killing E-1 settlement project – that threaten the very possibility of peace. AIPAC and its House allies, regrettably, have stayed silent in the face of these provocations. Instead, they are mobilizing pressure that, if successful, will only further weaken Abbas and strengthen the hand of those Palestinians who have long argued that negotiations and diplomatic actions are worthless, and that Palestinian rights will be achieved only through boycotts and divestment, or, worse yet, violence. Sponsors of this letter will be gathering signatures only until the end of the week. Write to your Member of Congress TODAY and urge them not to sign.
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