Statement approved by the Meretz USA Executive Board

12/09/07 

The Board of Directors of Meretz USA , an American not-for-profit organization dedicated to the achievement of a full and just peace between Israel and all its neighbors, and most particularly, the Palestinian people, extends its warmest congratulation and support to President George Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the leaders of Israel and the PLO, and all the participants in the recently held meeting at Annapolis convened with the objective of launching intensive negotiations toward the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the creation of a viable, peaceful Palestinian state.

If the United States, which has brokered 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.

We urge the parties to be guided by the principles and spirit of the Geneva Initiative: borders would approximate the 1967 lines, except where the parties negotiate 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 and access to Jerusalem’s major religious sites will be determined in keeping with their historic, religious, spiritual, and cultural significance to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; and we support a growing movement in Israel 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. We applaud and urge Israel to continue giving support to its Palestinian partners by such measures as prisoner releases and strengthening Palestinian security forces. 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. 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.

Now that the participants in Annapolis have come and gone, 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 ahead. 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.