A Real Road to Peace in the Middle East

The Green Party of the United States recognizes that our greatest contribution to peace in the Middle East will come through our impact on U.S. policy in the region. Our commitments to ecological wisdom, social justice, grass-roots democracy, and non-violence compel us to oppose U.S. government support for "friendly" regimes, both in Israel and in the Arab world, whenever those regimes violate human rights, international law, and existing treaties. Those same values compel us to support popular movements for peace and demilitarization, especially those which reach across the lines of conflict to engage both Palestinians and Israelis of good will.

1. We reaffirm the right of self-determination for both Palestinians and Israelis, whichprecludes the self-determination of one at the expense of the other. We recognize the historical and contemporary cultural diversity of Israeli-Palestinian society, including the religious heritage of Jews, Christians, Muslims and others. This is a significant part of the rich cultural legacy of all these peoples and must be respected. To ensure this, we supportequality before international law rather than appeals to religious faith as the fair basis on which claims to the land of Palestine-Israel are resolved.

2. We recognize that Jewish insecurity and fear of non-Jews is understandable, in light of Jews' history of horrific oppression in Europe. However, we oppose as both discriminatory and ultimately self-defeating the position that Jews would be fundamentally threatened by the implementation of full rights to Palestinian-Israelis and Palestinian refugees who wish to return to their homes. As U.S. Greens, we refuse to impose our views on the people of the region; rather, we would turn the U.S. government towards a new policy, which itself recognizes the equality, humanity, and civil rights of Jews, Muslims, Christians, and all others who live in the region, and which seeks to build confidence in prospects for secular democracy.

3. We reaffirm the right and feasibility of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in Israel. We acknowledge the significant challenges of equity and restitution this policy would encounter, and call on the U.S. government to make resolution of these challenges a central goal of our diplomacy in the region.

4. We reject the US's unbalanced financial and military support of Israel while Israel occupies Palestinian lands. We call on the U.S. President and Congress to end all military aid to Israel, shifting much of that aid to ecologicallyappropriate local projects, for economic and social development -- for Palestinians as well as Israelis. Until Israel withdraws from the Occupied Territories and dismantles the separation wall, we call on our government to suspend all other foreign aid to Israel, as well.

5. We demand that the US government end its veto of Security Council resolutionspertaining to Israel. We urge our government to join with the UN to secure the withdrawal of Israel to the 1967 boundaries, and to withhold its grants and loans to Israeluntil this withdrawal is undertaken.

6. We recognize the limited natural resources in Palestine-Israel and the necessity of creating an Arab/Israeli commission to negotiate the sharing of water by both nationalities.

7. We support a much stronger and supportive U.S. position with respect to all United Nations, European Union, and Arab League initiatives which seek a negotiated peace, and we support significantly greater U.S. financial support for such non-military solutions. We call for an immediate UN-sponsored, multinational peacekeeping and protection force in the Palestinian territories with the mandate to initiate a conflict-resolution commission.

8. We call on the foreign and military affairs committees of the U.S. House and Senate to conduct full hearings on the status of human rights and war crimes in Palestine/Israel.

9. We call on congressional intelligence committees to conduct full and public hearings on the development and deployment of weapons of mass destruction, whether by the Israeli military, irregular militias, or Arab states; it should be U.S. policy to seek the removal and/or destruction of all such weapons of mass death, wherever they are found.

10. We call for the complete dismantling of the Israeli "separation wall" in the occupiedWest Bank. A Green policy toward Israel and Palestine would offer such incentives for peace and mutual security that the wall would be unnecessary, and seen for what it is: anobstacle to peace and a unilateral escalation of conflict.

11. We know that significant international opinion is committed to a "two-state" solution. Yet, we recognize that the "two-state" solution may be increasingly unrealistic in the face of economic and social conditions in the Occupied PalestinianTerritories. We support a U.S. foreign policy which promotes serious reconsideration of the creation of one, secular, democratic state, for Palestinians and Israelis, on the landbetween the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan, as the national home of both peoples, with Jerusalem as its capital. We encourage a new U.S. diplomatic initiative to begin the long process of negotiation, laying the groundwork for such a single-state constitution. We recognize that such a state might take many forms, such as might emerge from a careful consideration of the Swiss model. The eventual model that is chosen must be decided by the peoples themselves. We realize the enormous hostilities that now exist between the two peoples, but history tells us that these are not insurmountable among peace-seeking people.

12. As an integral part of peace negotiations and the transition to peaceful democracy,we call for the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) whose inaugurating action would be mutual acknowledgement by Israelis and Palestinians that they have the same basic rights, including the right to exist in the same, secure place.