Meretz USA welcomes the Annapolis meeting

11/20/2007

Meretz USA President Larry Lerner and Chairman Theodore Bikel have sent greetings to all the participants in the meeting, particularly Ehud Olmert, Prime Minister of Israel, and PLO Chairman and President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, expressing the, “fervent hope that the meeting successfully launches intensive negotiations toward the end of the conflict and the creation of a viable, peaceful Palestinian state.”

Their statement of greetings continued:

“It is a painful understatement to say that this meeting has been a long time in coming, and its modest initial objectives pale beside the job that needs to be done. Nevertheless, if the United States, which has brokered and is hosting the Annapolis meeting, works closely with the principals and effectively enlists the support of Israel’s neighbors and others, we believe that an agreement can be crafted in a relatively short time.

“The parties know each others’ ‘red lines’ very well; relatively simple principles are understood by both sides: borders should adhere to the 1967 lines, except where the parties negotiate 1-1 territorial exchanges; Palestine shall be a homeland for the Palestinian people as Israel is a home for the Jewish people and the refugee problem should be negotiated in that context; borders and sovereignty in Jerusalem should follow population; control over Jerusalem’s major religious sites will be determined in keeping with their historic, religious, spiritual, and cultural significance to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; and Israel should begin now to facilitate the resettlement of Israelis living in settlements that will lie outside Israel’s final borders.

We applaud Prime Minister Olmert for his recent public statements committing himself and Israel toward detailed and intense negotiations to end the conflict, and look forward to his immediately implementing his promise to begin dismantling Israel’s illegal settlement outposts.

Similarly, we applaud President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad for working to assert the primacy of Palestinian Authority forces over militias and terror groups in the West Bank.

We believe that, as it has done in the past with other neighbors who refused to recognize its right to exist, the government of Israel can find ways of dealing with Hamas to reach a cease-fire on its border with the Gaza Strip. Not to do so confers veto power over progress to the most hostile elements in Gaza, with a potential spill-over into relations with the PLO and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

Most of all, we urge Secretary of State Rice and President Bush to work diligently with the parties to honor their commitments, and actively promote the process which they have initiated in the days, weeks and months that follow Annapolis. The weight and influence of the United States as a peace broker in the region, sadly missing for seven years, must be reconstituted and ardently pursued. It is an essential ingredient of success, no less than the determination of the two parties, and we expect and implore our government, having awakened the possibility of peace, to be unstinting in its realization, both now and henceforth.