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Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Green Party Statement on The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict


Green Party Statement on The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

Our Green values oblige us to support popular movements for peace and
demilitarization in Israel-Palestine, especially those that reach
across the lines of conflict to engage both Palestinians and Israelis
of good will.

We reaffirm the right of self-determination for both Palestinians and
Israelis, which precludes 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
it must be respected. To ensure this, we support equality before
international law rather than appeals to religious faith as the fair
basis on which claims to the land of Palestine-Israel are resolved.

We recognize that Jewish insecurity and fear of non-Jews is
understandable in light of Jewish 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. Still, 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.

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.

We reject U.S. unbalanced financial and military support of Israel
while Israel occupies Palestinian lands and maintains an
apartheid-like system in both the Occupied Palestinian Territories and
in Israel toward its non-Jewish citizens. Therefore, we call on the
U.S. President and Congress to suspend all military and foreign aid,
including loans and grants, to Israel until Israel withdraws from the
Occupied Territories, dismantles the separation wall in the Occupied
West Bank including East Jerusalem, ends its siege of Gaza and its
apartheid-like system both within the Occupied Palestinian Territories
and in Israel toward its non-Jewish citizens.

We also reject U.S. political support for Israel and demand that the
U.S. government end its veto of Security Council resolutions
pertaining to Israel. We urge our government to join with the U.N. to
secure Israel's complete withdrawal to the 1967 boundaries and its
compliance with international law.

We support a much stronger and supportive U.S. position with respect
to all United Nations, European Union, and Arab League initiatives
that seek a negotiated peace. We call for an immediate U.N.-sponsored,
multinational peacekeeping and protection force in the Palestinian
territories with the mandate to initiate a conflict-resolution
commission.

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, especially violations
committed during Israel's 2008-2009 invasion of Gaza ("Operation Cast
Lead") as documented in the 2009 "UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza
Conflict"("The Goldstone Report") authorized by the UN Commission on
Human Rights.

We recognize that despite decades of continuous diplomatic attempts by
the international community, it has failed to bring about Israel's
compliance with international law or respect for basic Palestinian
human rights; and that, despite abundant condemnation of Israel's
policies by the UN, International Court of Justice, and all relevant
international conventions, the international community of nations has
failed to stop Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights in
Israel and the OPT, while Israeli crimes continue with impunity. We
recall that ending institutionalized racism (apartheid) in South
Africa demanded an unusual, cooperative action by the entire
international community in the form of a boycott, divestment, and
sanctions (BDS) campaign against apartheid South Africa, and that BDS
can become the most effective nonviolent means for achieving justice
and genuine peace between Palestinians and Israelis, and for the
region, through concerted international pressure as applied to
apartheid South Africa; and that Palestinian resistance to ongoing
dispossession has mainly been nonviolent, including its most basic
form—remaining in their homes, on their land; and that while
Palestinian armed resistance is legitimate under international law
when directed at non-civilian targets, we believe that only nonviolent
resistance will maintain the humanity of Palestinian society, elicit
the greatest solidarity from others, and maximize the chance for
future reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. However, we
also recognize that our appeal to Palestinians to continue to resist
nonviolently in the face of ongoing existential threats from Israel is
hypocritical unless accompanied by substantial acts of international
support. We recall that in 2005, Palestinian Civil Society appealed to
the international community to support a BDS campaign against Israel,
and that in response the Green Party of the US endorsed this BDS
campaign in 2005. Therefore, we support the implementation of boycott
and divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to
South Africa in the apartheid era, which includes pressuring our
government to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel; and we
support maintaining these nonviolent punitive measures until Israel
meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people's inalienable
right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of
international law by

-Ending its occupation and colonization of all Palestinian lands and
dismantling the Wall in the West Bank
-Recognizing the fundamental rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel
to full equality; and
-Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian
refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN
resolution 194.

We recognize that international opinion has been committed to a
two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet, we view
the two-state solution as neither democratic nor viable in the face of
international law, material conditions and "facts on the ground" that
now exist in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Given
this reality, we support a U.S. foreign policy that promotes the
creation of one secular, democratic state for Palestinians and
Israelis on the land between 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 and that the
eventual model chosen must be decided by the peoples themselves. We
also acknowledge the enormous hostilities that now exist between the
two peoples, but history tells us that these are not insurmountable
among people genuinely seeking peace.

As an integral part of peace negotiations and the transition to
peaceful democracy, we call for the establishment of a Truth and
Reconciliation Commission 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.

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