A new letter, signed by over 30 former diplomats and national security officials, calls on the Democratic National Committee to revise the Israel plank of its party platform. The letter calls for Palestinian rights, a two-state solution, an end to settlement expansion, and a rejection of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to annex portion of the West Bank. It also calls for “clear opposition to violence, terrorism, and incitement from all sides.”
Signatories include a number of Obama administration officials, among them former Deputy National Security Advisors Ben Rhodes and Avril Haines.
“Past party platforms have rightly stated a commitment to Israel’s security and included condemnations of threats and actions against our ally, in addition to embracing a two-state outcome,” reads the letter. “Those platforms have, however, also been nearly silent on the rights of Palestinians, on Israeli actions that undermine those rights and the prospects for a two-state solution, and on the need for security for both peoples.”
The letter was celebrated by the liberal, pro-Israel group J Street. “Demonstrating strong support for the rights of both Israelis and Palestinians is both smart policy and politically popular — that’s why it’s rapidly becoming a consensus position in the Democratic Party,” said its president Jeremy Ben-Ami in a statement. “As these leading foreign policy experts make clear, it’s time for Democratic leadership to fully embrace these positions in the party platform. That can help pave the way for the next administration to successfully promote peace and to undo the tremendous damage wrought by the Middle East policies of President Trump.”
While the proposed revisions seem to be aimed at the policies of Netanyahu and Trump, they fail to address one of the major progressive demands on the subject: the conditioning of military aid to Israel. That issue was brought up repeatedly by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders on the presidential campaign trail and has majority support from the party’s base. A Data for Progress poll from last fall found that 65% of Democratic voters think aid to Israel should be conditioned in an effort to curb the country’s human rights abuses. “These results suggest that Democratic voters are not holding Israel to a different standard than they would hold any other recipient of US military aid dollars,” Data for Progress fellow and IfNotNow co-founder Emma Saltzberg wrote at the time, “They also suggest that Democratic politicians who float the possibility of changes to the US–Israel aid relationship do so with the support of their party’s voters.”
In a recent interview with Mondoweiss, Arab American Institute co-founder and author James Zogby explained how he believes two-state solution rhetoric and opposition to annexation aren’t sufficient responses to the current reality. Zogby fought for language on Palestine to be added to the Democratic platform as part of Jesse Jackson campaigns in the 1980s and Bernie’s 2016 campaign.
“Behind the argument for the two-state solution these days is racism. Even the arguments against annexation are racist,” said Zogby, “I mean, look at this letter that 120 Jewish leaders sent to Trump arguing against annexation. It said that if the West Bank gets annexed, it will force Israel to deal with a whole bunch of other problems. They would rather continue to support two states, but allow the things that happen on the ground to continue. What’s happening is a cancer that is eating up the territories. Settlement expansion, settler violence, extending property lines to encroach on Palestinian areas, house demolitions.”
In a conference with Jewish Democrats last month, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez said that two-state solution language would be included in the platform. “We want to make sure that our platform, which is our values statement of our party, is a platform that you can be proud of, a platform that, again, reaffirms our commitment to a two-state solution — negotiated directly by the parties,” said Perez.
Why do these diplomats say they support Palestinian rights?
Their stressing of the two state solution and their reference to Israel as “Jewish and democratic” without acknowledging the inherent contradiction indicates that they are not really interested in Palestinian rights, but are afraid that Israel’s Zionist regime will lose legitimacy if Israel annexes part of the Jordan Valley.
They just want some limited Palestinian rights in order to protect Jewish privileges and domination.
If they really support Palestinian rights, they should support BDS!
The Palestinian Liberation Organization, Press Release:
Dr. Ashrawi: “US-Israeli collusion on annexation requires international sanctions”
(May 6, 2020): “Israel’s approval of the illegal confiscation of 1000 square kilometers in the heart of the occupied West Bank to construct 7000 new illegal settlement units in the Bethlehem District constitutes a new war crime and a grave violation of international law, including international humanitarian and criminal laws.
This is an outrageous exploitation of the COVID-19 global pandemic to advance the illegal settler project and irreparably damage any prospect of political breakthrough.
It is obvious that Israel and its allies in the current US administration are unfazed by the serious yet still rhetorical international opposition to annexation plans, which are unfolding on the ground everyday.
This abject disregard for international law was evident in recent statements by US Ambassador David Friedman, who reaffirmed his fundamentalism and the US administration’s full support for annexation.
The US administration is anchoring its aggressive and illegal policies in biblical and extreme ideological references while disregarding and shunning the entire rules-based international order.
Responsible actors in the international community must stop the messianic US-Israeli agenda, which threatens to condemn the entire region to religious tensions and endless conflict.
All efforts must focus on confronting this reckless and lawless annexation agenda legally, politically, economically and through all possible actionable avenues.
Without applying serious accountability measures, including serious preventive action, the international community will be granting Israel additional time to carry out its extraterritorial agenda.”
At this point, it really boils down to one of two choices: supporting the status quo, i.e. 2SS ‘negotiations’ while land confiscation without annexation continues unabated, or; allowing for the annexation of the Occupied Territories (including Gaza) and formally creating a single state. At first, the single state would, of course, be an apartheid state. But, in time, religious and social barriers would start to break down as irrational fears diminish, the battle for civil rights for all grows, and some semblance of a real democracy emerges.
Cutting the aid is the only language the occupier will understand. The moment there is a small hint of the charity being stopped from going there, Israel sends thousands of lobbyists to beg and plead the Congress, to not stop it.
It is a simple solution, that members of Congress seem afraid to go there. For Israel to exist and keep their bloody occupation going, they need US support. What IS this control that Israel exerts over our Congress? Are AIPAC and the Jewish diaspora so important, over doing what is best for that region?