As Palestinian and Israeli negotiators meet tomorrow in the White House to begin a new round of direct talks under the auspices of the White House, we wish them luck but don’t hold out much hope. When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, successive administrations are unable to learn a simple lesson: insufficient pressure on Israel yields little chance for peace.

Two Israeli demands are likely to doom these talks to failure. First, Israel refuses to negotiate with Hamas, the Palestinian party that has won the largest number of votes in the 2006 elections. Ironically, it demands that Hamas agree to preconditions before entering talks while insisting that the PLO enter talks without any preconditions, including on settlements.

The second reason obstructing the impending talks is Israel’s continued settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. If it seems inconceivable to you that the Palestinians negotiate with Israel about a future Palestinian state as Israel continues to settle its citizens there, you are not alone. If it seems a bit déjà vu, you are not mistaken.

In the nineties, the decade of peace talks, beginning with the Madrid talks and the Oslo peace accords and culminating with the failure at the Camp David summit, the number of settlers increased from 250,000 in 1991 to 420,000 in 2000. The Palestinians rejected Israel’s insincere proposal at Camp David, reached under pressure from President Clinton and widely touted as a generous offer by Israel.

In 2000, after ten years of negotiations and a 70% increase of the settler population, the Palestinians were offered 73% of the West Bank, bisected by Israeli roads and without East Jerusalem.

Today, 520,000 settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, constituting 10% of Israel’s Jewish population. Congress, cowed by Israel’s extremist lobby, has effectively scuttled efforts by the Obama administration to stop Jewish settlements, resulting in an impartial 10-month settlement freeze, excluding East Jerusalem.

The Cordoba Initiative’s effort to build a mosque near ground zero has highlighted a widening rift between the United States and Islam. The conflation of Islam and terrorism is discrimination against the Muslim citizens of the United States and severely hampers our national interests abroad. American citizens should work to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which, we believe, is the root cause of tensions between the United States and the world’s Muslims. Support NewPolicy.org in engaging our political system for the cause of peace and reconciliation.

Jewish settlements constitute a grave threat to US national interests and to American policy objectives in the Middle East. Funding of settlement projects in the West Bank and East Jerusalem by domestic organizations harms our security and moral standing. Furthermore, these domestic settler organizations are subsidized by US taxpayer money. However, they are subject to US anti-discrimination laws and the US Criminal Code. Congress, the Obama administration and the Treasury Department should implement existing US laws against these organizations.

NewPolicy.org condemns Israel’s attack on humanitarian ships sailing from Europe to end the Gaza blockade. The attack on the Freedom Flotilla demonstrates Israel’s increasing isolation on the global stage. NewPolicy.org calls on Congress and the Obama administration to publicly condemn Israel’s actions to pro-peace and humanitarian activists of whom nine were killed and scores were injured in Israel’s botched operation. The president and Congress should also move swiftly to end the siege on Gaza, which has placed undue burden on Gaza’s population, 80% of whom rely on food distribution while 50% remain unemployed. Furthermore 15% of Gaza children have experienced abnormal growth for their age, stunting, an early sign of starvation.

Progressive Marcy Winograd challenges Congresswoman Jane Harman in the Southern California primaries of District 36. New Policy PAC endorses Winograd for her outspoken positions on ending the blockade on Gaza, freezing Jewish settlements, establishing a just resolution whether a one state or two state solution and pushing for negotiations on Iran instead of sanctions and war. 

Marcy Winograd’s campaign comes down to more jobs for America and less war. Please support Marcy Winograd’s campaign by contributing at our website or by sending a check to New Policy PAC.

In the past week there has been a flurry of activity around the renewed possibility of a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As frustration mounts over the interminable peace process and the glaring futility of the proximity talks, two American authors, an Israeli leftist and a Likud member of the Knesset publicly endorse the one-state solution as the most likely settlement (if not the best) in the same twenty-four hour period.

The rising chorus in support of a binational state is the culmination of the decades-long failure to separate the Palestinians and Israelis into two different nations. NewPolicy.org calls on the Obama administration and Congress to act quickly to end the occupation with all its crushing injustice and horrific violence, recognizing that a one-state solution is another viable option as facts on the ground continue to render the two-state solution unworkable.

A quarter of the House and the Senate defy the hard-line pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, and stand with the Obama administration in its quest to find a swift and just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. An increasingly large bloc of lawmakers demonstrates its determination to defend America’s security and moral standing. These brave lawmakers assert their independence in the face of the powerful pro-Israel lobby and its push for acquiescence to Israeli policies in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, no matter how damaging the policies in question are to America’s interests, security and troops in the region.

NewPolicy.org has conducted an analysis of the list of the signatories of the AIPAC letter from the House and the Senate. NewPolicy.org has also highlighted the members of Congress who have refused to sign the letter, by House and Senate.

View AIPAC's Letter Here.

Contribute to NewPolicy.org today and help the members of Congress who are steadfast in their vision of peace. The 2010 Congressional elections promise to be extremely competitive and Senators and Representatives working in the cause of peace should count on our support! 

The detrimental influence of AIPAC on the U.S. government’s foreign policy decisions in the Middle East is beyond argument at this point. But AIPAC’s power is not absolute.  We can act to influence policy decisions that promote peace in the Middle East, and there is now a lobby ready to take action. NewPolicy.org is an advocacy group that is affiliated with New Policy PAC, a political action committee that funds Congressional campaigns. If you are pro-peace, whether you are sympathetic to Israel’s plight, the Palestinian predicament, or simply pro-American security, you should support NewPolicy.org because peace will benefit all.

The situation in the Middle East continues to disintegrate.

During the past week alone, we have witnessed the desolate state of the peace process in Israel/Palestine. We grimaced at the sight of Vice President Biden landing in Israel, as his host country announces the building of 1600 units in an illegal settlement in East Jerusalem. We have winced in shame as the Lancet journal reported definitive signs of starvation in 20% of Gaza children as measured by stunting, due to the Gaza siege.

NewPolicy.org has compiled a Congressional scorecard for the 435 lawmakers currently serving in the House of Representatives. The Representatives are scored based on their support for an American foreign policy in the Middle East that best serves the national interest and brings a swift end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Although, there was a range of criteria which the scores may be based upon, NewPolicy.org chose four major initiatives over the past year that have highlighted the efforts of Congressmen to steer American foreign policy toward America’s long term goals in the region. These four initiatives also sought to realign American foreign policy in the Middle East with American values of liberty and justice for all mankind. Finally, and significantly, these four initiatives will go a long way toward assuaging the tension between the Muslim world and the United States, rectifying the tarnished image of the United States as a blind supporter of Israel’s governments no matter how destructive their policies are to the Palestinians, to Israel, and, indeed, to the United States.

Congressional Scorecard (by highest score, by represented state).

According to data analysis conducted by NewPolicy.org, Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans have contributed more than $1 million to Congressman Keith Ellison in the three-year period between 2006-2009, according to the Federal Election Commission website.  This large sum of money is almost twice as much as JStreetPAC , the moderate pro-Israel, pro-peace lobby, has contributed to all its candidates in the 2008 elections, although JStreetPAC supported 41 Congressmen during those elections with  a sum of $578,000.

NewPolicy.Org calls on President Obama to support a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem if Prime Minister Netanyahu does not agree to a settlement freeze. The Palestinian leadership has been organizing world support behind its unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood which it hopes to present to the United Nations as Palestinians grow more disillusioned with the peace process and Israel's settlement

NewPolicy.org supports President Carter's letter to the New York Times, the status quo is no longer an option. The Netanyahu government must understand that the price of stalling the peace process will be high and that increasing impediments to peace such as building settlements will not be tolerated by the United States government.

ANewPolicyPAC supports the Obama administration in its drive to end all settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated yesterday that Israeli settlements are the largest obstacle to a peaceful resolution to the conflict through a two-state solution. The Israeli government cannot negotiate in good faith with the Palestinians about a future Palestinian state while building Israeli settlements in the lands allotted to become the future state of Palestine.

NewPolicy.org strongly supports the Goldstone report and condemns the efforts to discredit it by House Resolution 867. The Goldstone report, headed by respected South African investigator Richard Goldstone, and commissioned by the United Nations Human Rights Council is an important call to accountability in the Middle East. The report details the crimes of both Hamas and Israel during the invasion of Gaza in 2009.