FOREIGN POLICY
is one of several DAF working groups. More about them here.

An initial policy paper by Julie Wornan is below. Other priority issues are nuclear proliferation; North Korea and Iran; the U.S.-European relationship and the economy of oil. If interested in joining this group, please contact Jim Cohen.

Paper on U.S. Policy on Israel/Palestine | Related resolution
Resolution on Iran | Resolution on troop build-up in Iraq

The Need for Peace

The war in Iraq costs the US 4 to 5 billion dollars a month (1) not counting the cost in lives and broken bodies. We have alienated our allies, and we have done nothing to pacify enemies and potential enemies.

A policy based on force is bound to provoke fear and anger. The anger of those who hate and fear America feeds our own fears, and the result is an ever more bloated military budget. A cycle driven by force can end only when the resources of the Nation and the planet are laid waste. There cannot be prosperity without peace.

Brutal domination breeds hatred. Terrorism thrives on fear and hatred. Fear, hatred, frustration and despair are to terrorism what oxygen is to fire. Peace is a prerequisite for security.

Nor can there be peace without justice. If Americans are to be free and safe at home and abroad, others must feel free and safe. This cannot be achieved by spreading the democracy of the ballot box alone. The worlds' peoples must feel free from exploitation, free from domination, free from oppression and free from hunger.

Need for peace in the Middle East

A just resolution of the conflict between Israel and Palestine is a necessary condition for world peace and stability. This has become a matter of the greatest urgency. So much so that it is no longer a matter of choice: indeed, there is no choice.

This is also one of the greatest challenges that US foreign policy must face.

Promoting a just peace requires courage. It means facing up to the American-Israeli lobby. AIPAC has terrorized independent thought by labeling any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic and by hinting that Israel's very existence would be threatened if the Israeli leadership received less than 100% backing. AIPAC has muscle and methods, as all politicians know.

But if the Democrats will not take a stand for truth and fairness, who will?

Supporting Israel does not mean supporting Sharon and the Likud

Israel is not just its right-wing party and its leaders. Israel is also the many Israelis who long for peace and believe in justice. Sharon's goal is to multiply Jewish settlements in Palestine and rely on overpowering force to crush Palestinian resistance - a policy framed as "combating terror". But military might cannot quell the hatred and despair born of oppression. Many Israelis know this. We can support Israel by supporting these people in their determination to make their country safe by working toward a just peace.

Supporting fairness need not mean losing votes

Lakoff observed, "Voters vote their identities and their values far more than their self-interests."(2) Here is where Democrats have an advantage: most Americans care about peace and justice, and these values serve our long-term self-interest. The Democrats must reframe issues too often viewed through the Republican distorting mirror. We must have confidence that the American people will respond to our values, which are also their values, if we take the trouble to explain the issues with honesty and patience.

Reframing the issue

As Lakoff observed, "Reframing is telling the truth as we see it -- telling it forcefully, straightforwardly and articulately, with moral conviction and without hesitation."(2)

The Israeli leadership frames its relation to Palestine in terms of a struggle against Palestinian terror. In this view, there will be peace only when that terror is eradicated. The problem can be solved only by force and by the threat of force - "the iron wall," as the Zionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinksi put it.

On AIPAC's website, where Israeli policy is packaged for American consumption, you will search in vain for the word "occupation", despite the fact that Israel has maintained an illegal occupation of Palestinian territories for 38 years - an occupation characterized by severe restrictions on fundamental freedoms, curfews, house demolitions, wanton destruction of property, arbitrary arrests and lawless killing; by the constant expansion of colonies for Jewish settlers on land which belongs to Palestine; and, during the last two years, by the construction of a barrier denying freedom of movement and creating de-facto ghettos. All this violence is framed as protection against terrorism. But it has not led to peace.

Doesn't it make sense to think about peace in terms of ending the occupation?

Israel claims that the "Security Fence" it is building on Palestinian territory is a defense against terror. However, it is no picket fence but an impenetrable barrier which separates farmers from their land and their markets, children and youth from their schools, sick people from health facilities, parents from sons and daughters… and incidentally creams off up to 60% of occupied Palestinian land for Israeli territorial expansion. (3)

Since the Israeli disengagement from Gaza, Israel no longer considers itself an occupying power, yet it closes Gaza's borders at will (4) and terrorizes its population (5). Israel likewise denies access by air or sea. The strip resembles an open-air prison.

Meanwhile, Jewish colonization of the West Bank is proceeding apace (6). The projected settlement called "E1" between the substantial Ma'ale Adumim and (confiscated) East Jerusalem will complete the separation of the West Bank into two blocs. A future Palestinian entity so fragmented and shrunken is inconceivable as a viable state (7). Yet, Bush has assured Sharon that "those changes on the ground, including existing major Israeli population centres [illegal settlements], must be taken into account in any final status negotiations” - that is, the land you stole is yours. "Takers keepers, losers weepers."

The founders of the United Nations, reeling from a most terrible war, understood the necessity of rejecting this childish view. Therefore, the UN charter prohibits the acquisition of territory by force. The 4th Geneva Convention forbids the colonization and the annexation of occupied territory. These provisions of international law were designed to remove some of the incentives for war.

The Republicans want to destroy the UN and replace international law by a philosophy which is tantamount to "might makes right". We know how dangerous such a policy can be. We must have the wisdom and the courage to promote peace based on mutual respect among nations, and honoring international treaties, the UN and its principles, and the fundamental rights of all human beings.

US Policy toward Israel

US foreign aid to Israel, including federal loan guarantees, is about $5 billion a year, or $13.7 million per day, constituting 30% of the total US foreign aid budget (8). The US gives Israel over 2 billion dollars per year in military aid alone. Israel spends this money on weapons - tanks, helicopter gunships, F-16 fighter jets - against a population that has no military defense.

This aid violates the Human Rights clause of the US Foreign Assistance Act (9) as the Israeli army engages daily in gross violations of Palestinians' rights. Prolonged detention without charges, humiliation, beatings, torture, and home demolitions are examples.

Negociations mean give-and-take. No Palestinian leader can "deliver" an end to Palestinian violence indefinitely without getting something substantial from Israel in return. Indeed, Palestinian violence is useful to Sharon in so far as it provides the pretext for the "security fence" and all the other forms of harassment (checkpoints, curfews, property destruction, confiscations, ...) whose unspoken purpose is to provoke Palestinians to leave.

The US must therefore put pressure on the Israeli leadership to take serious, significant steps towards peace, including

- immediately ceasing all building construction in the settlements on Palestinian land,

- suspending all work on the Wall as a prelude to dismantling it,

- removing all checkpoints within the West Bank,

- ceasing targeted assassinations,

- releasing Palestinian political prisoners,

- ending Palestinian house demolitions,

- withdrawing troops from the occupied territories. (10)

The US should suspend all military aid to Israel until these measures go into effect. Only such a firm position has any chance of moving Israel toward peace. It will be extremely difficult and will take enormous courage, but there is no alternative if peace is the goal. And peace has got to be the goal. There is simply no alternative.

America can show leadership through generosity, compassion and adherence to justice and respect for human rights. These values are the hallmark of the Democratic party. We must be a bulwark against a war-profiting military-industrial complex and a belligerent ideology verging on madness. If the Democrats will not take the lead toward security through sanity, who will? If the US Democrats lack the courage of their convictions, to whom can America, and the world, turn?

Notes:

1. http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/
20040701-024236-4063r.htm

2. Don't Think of an Elephant! Know your values and frame the debate, by George Lakoff.

3. The Sharon plan (the route of the fence, the settlement blocs and the Jordan Valley) leaves in the hands of the Palestinians no more than 8 percent of Mandatory Palestine.

- http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/632252.html

The entire Occupied Areas – the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza – make up only 22% of Israel/Palestine, or an area the size of Delaware. - E-1: The End of a Viable Palestinian State by Jeff Halper, March 31, 2005, http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/e1.html

4. The poorly functioning border with Egypt on the one hand, and the closed border with Israel on the other, make Gaza a prison, and patients are unable to leave for vital life saving treatments. - Physicians for Human Rights

http://www.phr.org.il/phr/article.asp?articleid=269
&catid=55&pcat=-1&lang=ENG

5. Israeli jetfighters, mainly F-16s, continue to air-strike many areas in the 'recently-evacuated' Gaza Strip, in which several Palestinians have been killed, dozens others wounded, severe damages inflicted to buildings and a great deal of panic caused to men, women and children. - Sleeping in Gaza under roaring Israeli jets, by Rami Almeghari, Gaza, October 2, 2005, http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4224.shtml

6. As the last of Israel's 8,000 or so settlers were being evacuated from Gaza and the northern West Bank, Israel's Interior Ministry released figures showing that 18,000 Israeli Jews had moved to West Bank settlements in the last 18 months, with most settling in the blocs of Ariel, Gush Etzion and Ma'ale Adumim. - The Theatre of Disengagement by Graham Usher, September 2nd, 2005, http://meionline.com/newsanalysis/396.shtml

7. Israel is constructing 3500 housing units in E-1, a corridor connecting Jerusalem to the West Bank settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim. … As a key element of an Israeli “Greater Jerusalem,” the E-1 plan removes any viability from a Palestinian state. It cuts the West Bank in half… The Bush Administration, while calling the E-1 plan “unhelpful,” nevertheless formally recognized the Ma'aleh Adumim settlement bloc, together with E-1, in last year's agreement between Bush and Sharon – a fundamental American policy change that was ratified almost unanimously by Congress. This puts the US in the very uncomfortable position of undermining its own Road Map initiative, which stems from the “Bush vision” of an Israeli-Palestinian peace. It also neutralizes completely America's role as an honest broker…

- E-1: The End of a Viable Palestinian State by Jeff Halper, March 31, 2005, http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/e1.html

8. http://www.miftah.org/

9. The Foreign Assistance Act (1961) states:

Sec. 116. 66 Human Rights.—(a) No assistance may be provided under this part to the government of any country which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights, including torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, prolonged detention without charges, causing the disappearance of persons by the abduction and clandestine detention of those persons,67 or other flagrant denial of the right to life, liberty, and the security of person, unless such assistance will directly benefit the needy people in such country.

10. An international force might be deployed to protect the civilian populations where necessary during Israeli troop withdrawal and pending final evacuation of settlements.

 

Resolution calling for a proactive policy on the part of the United States of America for the renewal of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process passed in Heidelberg, March 2007

Proposed by Joanne Yaron (Chair, DA Israel) and Susan Vaillant (holding proxy for Connie Borde, DNC Member and Chair, DA France)

WHEREAS the Israeli-Palestinian long-term violent conflict has become one of the central problems in the Middle East and this dangerous situation needs to be resolved for the sake of world peace and stability, and the peoples of the region;
WHEREAS we are encouraged by the numerous peace attempts and actions by the relevant parties and several of the leading Arab countries, and from such important achievements as the long standing 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty and 1994 Jordan-Israel Peace Treaty, both concluded with the active facilitation of the United States of America;
WHEREAS the United States has already been proactively involved in such official and unofficial agreements, working papers and conference protocols as the 1991 Madrid Principles, 1993 Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of Principles, the 1998 Wye River Memorandum, 2000 Camp David Summit, 2001 Clinton Parameters and the 2002 Road Map for Peace;
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that Democrats Abroad supports a plank in the Democratic Party platform to implement and renew with all judicious speed a proactive policy to be actively facilitated by the United States of America in close concert with other interested nations, the United Nations, the European Union as well as official representatives of Israelis and Palestinians who have been instrumental in working for peace in the region;
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Democratic Party platform should promote the establishment of a Permanent Ambassador assisted by a team of researchers and negotiators as a resource, stationed in the Middle East, preferably in both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and active in the development of an Israeli-Palestinian peace process;
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the United States of America will develop in cooperation with other nations, a package of economic, social and political incentives as an integral part of its proactive policy, for the benefit of the Palestinian Authority and the State of Israel, with incentives to begin at a time certain to continue or be suspended based on benchmarks for progress;
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that agreement by the Palestinian Authority and the State of Israel to cease and desist all acts and rhetoric of violence and the development or expansion of settlements, and to publicly and mutually respect each other’s rights to exist and recognize relevant prior agreements, will contribute to the execution of a treaty that respects international law, attested by neighboring states, thereby bringing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to its long overdue peaceful conclusion.

Resolution opposing troop buildup in Iraq
proposed by Connie Borde (DNC Member and Chair, DA France), Susan Haug (Vice Chair, DA Germany), Joe Smallhoover (International Counsel) and Mitch Wolfson (Chair, DA Germany)

Passed in Heidelberg, March 2007

WHEREAS the US-led military intervention was preceded by deliberate misrepresentation on the part of the coalition governments of key facts concerning Iraq's military potential prior to the invasion;
WHEREAS the war in Iraq has failed even in its stated goals, increasing terrorism rather than bringing democracy and peace to Iraq and the region;
WHEREAS subsequent to the invasion many tens of thousands of Iraqis and more than 3000 coalition and military and civilian personnel have perished, and many tens of thousands more have been wounded;
WHEREAS civilian refugees are currently fleeing from Iraq in large numbers with all ensuing political and humanitarian repercussions;
WHEREAS in the aftermath of the coalition intervention in Iraq the level of support for international terrorism has increased, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has worsened, the entire Middle East has been destabilized and there has been a resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan;
WHEREAS the American electorate clearly demonstrated their disapproval of the Bush/Cheney Administration and the Republican Party in the 2006 elections, especially with respect to the Administration’s Iraq policy;
WHEREAS Democrats Abroad has previously called for the rapid return of American and coalition troops from Iraq;
WHEREAS the Bush/Cheney Administration continues to increase the number of troops in Iraq;
NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that Democrats Abroad strongly supports a political rather than a military solution to the civil war in Iraq involving a regional diplomatic effort including Iraq’s neighbors, as military force cannot be the answer to communal violence;
AND LET IT BE FURTHER RESOLVED that Democrats Abroad calls on the U.S. Congress to oppose all attempts by the Bush/Cheney Administration to increase the number of US troops in Iraq and to refuse funding for any escalation of the war in Iraq.Resolution on preventing military attack on Iran
Proposed by Caitlin Kraft-Buchman (Chair, DA Switzerland)
WHEREAS we fear that the administration of George W. Bush is again guiding the nation to a preemptive war - this time with Iran - while still engaged in two unsuccessful wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and
WHEREAS despite the painful lessons from the Iraq war disaster - including more than 3000 U.S. soldiers dead and Iraq torn asunder by sectarian civil war – the Bush administration appears to be following the same course it chose in the run up to war in Iraq: insisting that war is "a last resort," yet putting in motion the engines of war; brushing aside doubts and warnings; then presenting war as unavoidable, and
WHEREAS the repercussions of a war with Iran - apart from more U.S. casualties, more civilian deaths, and more enormous military expenditures - would be horrific, stirring up even more fury in the region and throughout the Muslim world, further isolating the United States, infecting populations across the Middle East with an epidemic of anti-Americanism, drawing other countries in the region into war, and tipping control of Pakistan to extremist movements, thereby leaving a region in flames, even larger numbers of Muslims dying, and thus an Israel finding it harder to protect itself against an eventual attack by someone with an unconventional weapon,
BE IT RESOLVED THAT Democrats Abroad urge the Democratic Party and Congress to impress upon the President that the current crisis over Iran's enrichment of uranium and its alleged aid and assistance to the insurgency in Iraq should be solved through diplomacy and direct talks with the government of Iran, and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT Democrats Abroad urge the Democratic Party and Congress to warn the President and his administration of the dire foreseeable and unforeseeable repercussions of an air strike on Iran and to take every conceivable step to prevent the Administration from initiating, supporting or encouraging a military attack on Iran.

Resolution on preventing military attack on Iran
Proposed by Caitlin Kraft-Buchman (Chair, DA Switzerland)
Passed in Heidelberg, March 2007

WHEREAS we fear that the administration of George W. Bush is again guiding the nation to a preemptive war - this time with Iran - while still engaged in two unsuccessful wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and
WHEREAS despite the painful lessons from the Iraq war disaster - including more than 3000 U.S. soldiers dead and Iraq torn asunder by sectarian civil war – the Bush administration appears to be following the same course it chose in the run up to war in Iraq: insisting that war is "a last resort," yet putting in motion the engines of war; brushing aside doubts and warnings; then presenting war as unavoidable, and
WHEREAS the repercussions of a war with Iran - apart from more U.S. casualties, more civilian deaths, and more enormous military expenditures - would be horrific, stirring up even more fury in the region and throughout the Muslim world, further isolating the United States, infecting populations across the Middle East with an epidemic of anti-Americanism, drawing other countries in the region into war, and tipping control of Pakistan to extremist movements, thereby leaving a region in flames, even larger numbers of Muslims dying, and thus an Israel finding it harder to protect itself against an eventual attack by someone with an unconventional weapon,
BE IT RESOLVED THAT Democrats Abroad urge the Democratic Party and Congress to impress upon the President that the current crisis over Iran's enrichment of uranium and its alleged aid and assistance to the insurgency in Iraq should be solved through diplomacy and direct talks with the government of Iran, and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT Democrats Abroad urge the Democratic Party and Congress to warn the President and his administration of the dire foreseeable and unforeseeable repercussions of an air strike on Iran and to take every conceivable step to prevent the Administration from initiating, supporting or encouraging a military attack on Iran.

 

| Home |