Open letter to Minnesota’s Congressional Delegation:
Senators Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar,
Representatives Keith Ellison, Betty McCollum, Tim Walz, John
Kline, Erik Paulsen, Collin Peterson, Richard Nolan and Tom Emmer
The undersigned individuals and organizations, all based in
Minnesota, express our resolute concern that Congress has taken imprudent steps
to punish Palestinians for seeking legal redress from the international
community for the serious war crimes that Israel, with extreme impunity, has
committed and continues to commit against them.
Congress is also seeking to punish Palestinians for showing maturity and
diplomacy in signing more than 20 international treaties.
When the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, there were only a
handful of illegal (Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 49) settlers in the
occupied West Bank. Since then, an ever-widening encroachment of illegal
settlers has caused ever-increasing Israeli expropriation of Palestinian land,
the destruction of the Palestinian economy and infrastructure, the theft and
destruction of Palestinian natural resources and the loss of thousands of
Palestinian lives at the hands of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and armed
illegal settlers.
According to the
Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (founded by Hibbing native and
current Israeli citizen, Jeff Halper), since 1967, the Israeli Government has
destroyed over 49,000 Palestinian homes[1]
forcing the families who owned and inhabited these homes into homelessness in a
conspicuous and continuing effort to ethnically cleanse Palestine to create a
Jewish-only state. According to respected human rights organizations such as
Amnesty International[2],
Human Rights Watch[3],
the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs[4]
(UNOCHA) and B’tselem[5],
daily Palestinian existence is dominated by a brutal, illegal and dehumanizing
occupation under which self-determination is an unrealizable dream. Checkpoints
and road closures make routine activities associated with normal daily life,
like going to school, obtaining medical treatment at a hospital or commuting to
work, impossible. The infamous Apartheid wall prevents Palestinians from
visiting friends and family who live only a few minutes away as the crow flies.
During his presidency, George W. Bush uttered the words, “This is awful,” when
he was spirited through one of these checkpoints in his limousine[6],
having gazed out the window at throngs of Palestinians being dehumanized at the
hands of 18-year-old IDF soldiers equipped with machine guns paid for by the
United States.
Conditions were horrendous in 1993 when the Oslo Accords
were signed. The promise of the Accords represented an anticipated negotiated
final status agreement between the Palestinians, a stateless, de-militarized,
powerless people, and the Israelis, the strongest military and the only nuclear
power in the Middle East. This could have been a crowning achievement for both
sides. All attempts to reach a
negotiated final status agreement, however, failed long ago and the principles
for settlement enunciated in the Oslo Accords are unlikely to ever be revived.
In 2001, with the election of hard-liner Ariel Sharon as Prime Minister of
Israel, the Oslo Accords, along with any realistic hopes of an equitable
negotiated final settlement, died. Sharon had
consistently rejected the Oslo peace process and criticized Israel's positions
in attempting to negotiate a final status settlement with the Palestinians.
Fourteen years later, any negotiated settlement between the parties is
realistically impossible given Israel’s massive illegal colonization of the
West Bank. Israel’s far right government won’t budge. Racist elements in the
Israeli government and society are gaining more and more political control. The
United States, given the influence of the pro-Israel lobby, has repeatedly
demonstrated its unwillingness to serve as a neutral
mediator and Israel refuses to deal with any other country or international
organization willing to assume that role.
When
you arm Israel to the teeth with the most sophisticated weaponry in America’s
arsenal while simultaneously blocking Palestinian access to non-violent legal
remedies, you are committing the worst form of hypocrisy. In addition to
severely tarnishing America’s image abroad, you are providing convincing
arguments to those who preach that violence is the only practical means to
bring about change.
Presenting
a case to the International Criminal Court is, above all, a non-violent
remedial legal action consistent with the rule of law. By punishing the
Palestinians for pursuing a legal remedy in an international forum, Congress is
saying that the Palestinians are not entitled to the same universal rights and
protections that others enjoy under international humanitarian law, that
Palestinian lives don’t matter, that they must accept that they are lesser
human beings entitled to nothing more than a wretched existence, always to be
powerless, stateless and dependent on whatever scraps of dignity and sustenance
Israel may allow and forever without a path to achieve the freedom, equality
and self-determination that many in the U.S. take for granted. Our Congress is
telling the Palestinians that their humanity is less than the humanity of the
Israelis that rule over them, that they must never strive to be equal human
beings and that if they do, they will be punished.
The FY15 Consolidated Appropriations Bill was passed by
Congress in December. A provision in the bill cuts off all aid to the
Palestinians if they initiate an International Criminal Court investigation
against Israeli nationals. For the “crime” of simply attempting to seek the
enforcement of international law by an internationally recognized law
enforcement authority, Congress has imposed a penalty. This is shameful.
Israel, a rich and powerful country, having methodically committed war crimes
and crimes against humanity against the Palestinians for more than half a
century, continues to be the recipient of a never ending stream of rich rewards
from an overly fawning Congress, surpassing in extravagant largesse the financial
and military assistance given by the United States to any other country.
We call on the members of the Minnesota delegation to
Congress to be strong advocates for justice and human rights. There is only one
path towards peace in the Middle East and that is the path of justice. Do not
punish Palestinians for seeking justice through legal and non-violent means.
[6]
Rice, Condoleezza, No Higher Honor: A
Memoir of My Years in Washington, Broadway Books, NY, 2011.
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