Your first diplomatic visit as prime minister to our greatest ally, the United States is taking place at a critical juncture where both governments must assure their constituencies of their foreign policy competency. Neither can afford another catastrophe.
You can help the American’s from making the same mistake that so many previous administrations have made before them: blaming the Israeli presence in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) as a significant reason for the lack of Israeli-Palestinian peace. As you well know, assigning blame for the lack of peace to the settlement movement will only prolong the conflict and completely ignores the reality on the ground.
As a former leader of the settlement movement, Prime Minister Bennett, you are perfectly positioned to discredit the view that the towns and cities in Judea and Samaria are obstacles to peace. You can help them to see that we are actually an integral part of the solution. And you can protect our American allies from making the same grave mistakes they have made in the past. You must convey that Israel has every right to develop Judea and Samaria.
US President Joe Biden has been actively involved in America’s foreign policy implementation for more than four decades. And throughout that time, the US position has been consistently critical of the settlement movement (excluding the last four years) and to what result? Despite the best intentions, the fixation on creating a Palestinian state has only moved the region further from achieving a lasting peace. They must begin to look at the conflict through a lens that is focused on how to peacefully resolve the conflict as opposed to how to achieve a specific outcome.
Preceding American administrations have never been big fans of the settlement movement. While the Republican leaders gave silent consent or turned a blind eye to settlement growth, the Democrats, especially Clinton and Obama, viewed Jewish cities in Judea and Samaria as obstacles to peace.
The past four years saw a fundamental shift in that perspective, recognizing that the settlements were in fact contributing to the enhancement of Israeli-Palestinian relations. This was reflected in the visits that former US ambassador to Israel David Friedman made to the region; in the support provided to factories in joint Arab-Israeli industrial areas; in the administration’s openness to increased Israeli sovereignty; and the need to address natural growth of all of those who live there. Washington was beginning to accept that both Israelis and Palestinians are here to stay, that neither will be moved or uprooted, and it is therefore necessary to plan for proper neighborly relations.
Your duty, Mr. Prime Minister, is to continue to develop these principles. I urge you to proudly tell the present government about the tens of thousands of Palestinians who work alongside Israelis in the joint industrial areas in which the United State has invested. Illustrate for them the social and economic benefits which the Palestinians enjoy as employees in Israel, in contrast to their neighbors who work under the Palestinian Authority.
Tell them our stories – how even in administering first aid during car accidents and in retrieving each other’s missing pets, we are beginning to act as normal neighbors. Share with them the peaceful daily interactions of Palestinians and Jews who interact at the Gush Etzion junction. Hundreds of these meetings occur every day, tens of thousands every month.
If you choose your words wisely and paint the picture of our daily reality, you can help the current administration to view us as partners in bringing peace between Israelis and Palestinians and certainly not as obstacles to peace. It is time to discard the failed approaches of the past, and embrace policies that have already resulted in historic breakthroughs in peaceful Israeli-Arab coexistence.
This summit is coming at a critical time as America’s and Israel’s enemies in the Middle East are feeling very good about themselves. This is not a time where we can afford to be divided. But it is also not a time that we can afford to make the same mistakes of the past.
Wishing you much success.
The author is the mayor of Efrat.