U.S. Embassy Israel

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Ambassador Jones
The American Jewish Committee
Board of Governors Mission
Shimshon Center, Beit Shmuel, Jerusalem
March 20, 2006

I want to thank The American Jewish Committee President E. Robert Goodkind, Executive Director David Harris and Associate Executive Director Shula Bahat for the opportunity to meet with you this morning.
As a newcomer to Israel, I have met with many visiting American delegations and their in-country representatives from groups like yours. I've learned a great deal from these encounters and exchanges.
I want to acknowledge the AJC’s important work in building bridges between nations and peoples, and especially in increasing the level of understanding between the American and Israeli people. The people-to-people work you do, working with individuals, institutions, with civil society leaders as well as with young people, makes my job as U.S. Ambassador that much easier.
In addition, the AJC’s support for interfaith activities and its related fight against anti-Semitism and for human rights worldwide helps to erase stereotypes and develop important friendships. Your work around the globe stimulates an open dialogue that is so critical in a time when intolerance and bigotry, not tolerance and acceptance, hold sway in too large a segment of the world. We have much work to do.
This is a difficult time for Israel as a nation, as the country prays for the recovery of one of its most historically important leaders -- PM Ariel Sharon and is about to decide on those who will lead it for the next four years. During this difficult time, compounded by recent developments within the Palestinian Authority, Israel has once again shown the resilience of its people and its democratic tradition. The rule of law and stability prevail.
This is dare I say, a well-informed—no, super-informed group, so in order not to speak at too general a level, let me just discuss a few issues the Embassy is working on that you might not know about but I think will be of interest to you, and then leave most of the time for your questions.
My staff reminds me that we have arranged with the organizers of today’s briefing for my remarks to be totally off the record, so that we can have an open discussion.

Role of the US Embassy

The United States seeks to encourage regional cooperation here and in other regions through a host of programs and people-to-people exchanges as well as through the more traditional government to government diplomacy most often covered in the news.
The key buzzword nowadays, as you have likely heard in many of Secretary Rice’s speeches the last two months, is “transformational diplomacy” – what we and our colleagues in the region and around the world strive to do every day.
I’d like to provide you with several examples of how the Embassy is encouraging greater cooperation, both between countries and throughout the region, to transform the situation over the long term and bring a better reality to the Israeli and Palestinian people.
The U.S. Department of State established the Wye River People-to-People Exchange Program in 2000, including funding of some $10 million over five years to increase mutual understanding between Israelis and Palestinians, to promote cooperation to achieve common goals, and to strengthen the prospects for peace. The program grew out of the recognition that peace must be built between ordinary citizens as well as political elites.
One of the programs funded by Wye supported the “Peace Research Institute in the Middle East,” a non-governmental, non-profit organization established by Palestinian and Israeli researchers. This project engaged teams of Israeli and Palestinian historians to devise a series of history textbooks that set their competing versions of history side-by-side on the same pages for students. The project was aimed at bridging the divide between the two peoples. Aimed at 15- and 16-year-olds, the five-year project produced three booklets, distributed in seven Israeli schools and seven schools attended by Palestinians or Israeli Arabs. The program results proved to be important, particularly in the promotion of tolerance and non-violence through mutual understanding.
That project is just one example of the many amazing and heartening cooperative projects undertaken by Israelis, Palestinians, and Americans under the Wye grants these last five years.
The U.S. government is also supporting efforts to promote a dialogue of tolerance and peace by religious leaders in the region. Late in 2004, we awarded a grant of $43,000 to support programs on inter-religious dialogue and to advance the peace process through the International Centre for Reconciliation in the U.K. and the Mosaica Center for Interreligious Understanding here in Jerusalem.
These funds were used to help carry out a program in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza to bring senior Israeli and Palestinian Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religious leaders together to advance implementation of the peace- and tolerance-supporting principles they agreed to in the “Alexandria Declaration of Religious Leaders in the Holy Land” in Egypt in January 2002.

In the middle of 2005, carrying forward on our work under that grant, the Embassy supported the foundation of religious reconciliation and religious tolerance centers in Israel and Gaza designed to advance just such an inter-communal dialogue. Again, this type of work doesn’t make the headlines and its results will not be seen overnight. but we do believe it is important and I should note that if you look at the English version of “Ha’aretz” this morning you will see that this work continues. Just late last week and probably over the weekend there was a meeting in Seville in Spain that brought together, I think it was 32 Rabbis and 32 Imams from 34 countries to continue the process of dialogue and to show that it is not religion that divides the people; that in fact, religion can be part of the solution in the disputes between Moslems and Jews or Arabs and Israelis.

I also want to talk briefly about what we have been doing to respond to the Palestinian elections and the elevation of Hamas to the leadership of the Palestinian Authority. As President Bush stated in his most recent State of Union Address: “The Palestinian people have voted in elections. And now the leaders of Hamas must recognize Israel, disarm, reject terrorism, and work for lasting peace.” The Quartet has insisted that a future Palestinian government “must be committed to nonviolence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations, including the Roadmap.”

We continue to be devoted to the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people, and we shall remain so. Just yesterday, our Consul General here in Jerusalem, Jake Walles and myself sponsored a meeting in my home to address ways of meeting humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people in Gaza at a time when the normal crossing are under a grave security threat. I am pleased that we could reach agreement to begin using new facilities at the crossing at Kerem Shalom to supply the needs of pressing humanitarian goods, particularly wheat, into Gaza. We are also ready to assist the parties to improve security at the crossings.
Of course, the United States has contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to fund hundreds of projects to assist the Palestinian people over the years, providing $225 million through USAID in 2005 alone. While no specific decisions have been made as yet regarding cancellation of any Palestinian assistance programs, the U.S. government is currently reviewing all assistance projects on a case-by-case basis, as Secretary Rice directed. I think it is fair to say that we can expect to see less project aid to the Palestinians. Any aid that could in any way conceivably benefit a Palestinian Authority dominated by Hamas will in fact be eliminated. At the same time, humanitarian aid that can go directly to the Palestinian people through humanitarian organizations may well increase.

Our position is consistent with that of the Quartet: future assistance to any new Palestinian government will be reviewed by donors against that government's commitment to the principles of nonviolence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations, including the Roadmap.
Israel and the Palestinians must adhere to their Roadmap commitments.

Fighting Anti-Israel and Anti-Semitic Incitement

Let me mention some USG efforts on the ground to fight incitement in the PA, including efforts supported by our Consulate General in Jerusalem and our USAID mission to the West Bank and Gaza in recent years:
U.S. AID Conflict Management and Mitigation grants: One of these grants supports the production of a joint Israeli-Palestinian TV drama series aimed at creating a gradual transformation in the beliefs and perceptions of both Israeli and Palestinian societies.
The Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration introduced educational materials and peer mediation training in all UNRWA schools in the West Bank & Gaza using books that introduce human rights and tolerance concepts in grades 5-8.
In the area of combating anti-Semitic incitement, the State Department’s Office of the Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues, currently headed by Ambassador Ed O’Donnell - whom many of you likely know - promotes educational programs and Holocaust remembrance commemorations worldwide. Such activities are critical in helping the world absorb the lessons of the Holocaust, and they are also bulwarks against the spread of anti-Semitism.

In conclusion:

U.S.-Israeli ties remain strong as we pursue common goals of peace and security and the advancement of bilateral cooperation.
The United States will continue to promote regional cooperation and reconciliation, at both the government-to-government and people-to-people level, as will many other nations.
We remain confident that progress can and will be made. In the long run, however, it will be up to the interested citizens in this region - the academics, the scientists, the developers, civil society leaders and students - to see beyond the current barriers to a more peaceful and prosperous region.
With help from the international community, and thoughtful, active engagement by non-governmental organizations such as the AJC, the people of this region can find new and creative ways to work together to overcome the common problems both peoples face.
I look forward to your questions.