Interreligious Committee Calls for Urgent
U.S.-Led Push for Mideast Peace;
Believes This Effort Would Evoke Strong Support
At Home and Worldwide

Concerned over the continuing deterioration in Israeli-Palestinian relations, the U.S. Interreligious Committee is appealing to the Bush Administration to give high priority now to pressing forward on the Quartet’s "Roadmap to Peace" and the President's vision of "two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security."

The Committee has consistently advocated that peace between Israel and the Palestinians, not war in Iraq, should be the highest priority of U.S. Middle East policy. The Quartet's Roadmap to Peace calls for declarations committing both sides to cessation of violence and to a timetable for achieving a viable, two-state solution by 2005. The Roadmap demands comprehensive Palestinian reforms, including appointing a Prime Minister and dismantling the terrorist infrastructure; and requires Israel to freeze expansion of settlements and to withdraw to the lines of September 2000. The Quartet would provide a monitoring team to measure progress on the Roadmap.

Given the deep fears and bitter mistrust on both sides, it will take more than words to help the parties move toward peace. Palestinian economy and society are devastated, and its security forces almost totally destroyed. Israel’s economy is hurting badly; and it has specific new security concerns related to the prospect of war in Iraq. Both sides will be seeking additional aid. The Committee urges the U.S. to continue to support direct delivery of urgently needed humanitarian relief by NGO's working in Gaza and the West Bank. The Committee believes any direct U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority should be conditioned on the P.A. making essential political, economic and social reforms and acting effectively to prevent terrorism; and that loan guarantees requested by the Government of Israel to bolster its economy should be conditioned on its freezing expansion of settlements.

Arab-Israeli-Palestinian peace, an urgent goal in its own right, also is critically important for preventing terrorism and for achieving the U.N.’s goal of eliminating Iraq‘s weapons of mass destruction, as a step toward a Middle East zone free of such weapons. While Americans are deeply divided about the prospect of going to war in Iraq, the Committee believes U.S.-led efforts for peace in the Middle East would evoke strong support here at home, among Arabs and Israelis, and worldwide.