US Green Party Platform: A Real Road to
Peace in the Middle East
The following platform relating to democracy and US
foreign policy was adopted at the National Convention of the US Green Party,
Milwaukee, WI, 23-28 June 2004.
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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, 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 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.
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 ecologically
appropriate 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 resolutions
pertaining 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 Israel until 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
occupied West 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: an obstacle 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
Palestinian Territories. 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 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, 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.
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