If the US Wants Peace & Coexistence, Why Ignore the Jews?

Jeff Daube's letter is on a subject I have been harping on with Consulate officials here in Jerusalem and State Department people in Washington:

Why no cooperation?


Sir, — The juxtaposition of two unrelated news items in your September 9 issue (“‘Palestinians must step up sewage recycling’” and “Israeli academic affiliated with Samaria university reinstated to Berlin conference”) struck me as ironic.

The first concerns multiple pleas to the Palestinians by Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan to accept Israel’s assistance in the treatment of waste water. The second reports on the reinstatement Prof. Ronen Cohen, a recognized expert on modern Iran at the Ariel University Center (AUC), after having been banned from a Berlin academic conference by a Dr.Gunter Meyer due to the AUC’s so-called illegal location.

In June 2010, I participated in a meeting hosted jointly by AUC and the Samaria Regional Council to interest US government officials in hooking up Salfit, an Arab town, to the sophisticated sewage treatment plant in the city of Ariel – a win-win for all and a great way to build peace, literally from the underground up. Unfortunately, there was no indication then (or in my many meetings with US Consulate staff and State Department officials since) that projects of this nature are to be supported.

Why, I continue to ask them, is the PA lavished with USAID funds while proposals for laudable coexistence initiatives for the benefit of Jewish and Arab residents in Judea and Samaria are deemed unworthy? Perhaps there will come a day when the PA, Foggy Bottom and Dr. Meyer and others like him might be persuaded to explore with Israelis the advantages of inclusion over marginalization. I am sure AUC would be overjoyed to host just such a conference.

JEFF DAUBE
Jerusalem
The writer is director of the Israel office of the Zionist Organization of America.

If the United States wants peace and coexistence, and not just the goal of a Pal. state, then all the people on the ground have to be involved, otherwise, it's not genuine.  All the financial efforts by the Consulate, all their activities directed solely at Arab residents of Judea and Samaria, discriminating against the Jewish residents of the same geographical area, are not for peace but simply to 'get rid of the Palestinian problem' with no regard for the Jews there, their rights, their existence.

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