FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 19, 2008

BRIT TZEDEK RESPONDS TO THE
GAZA CEASEFIRE ANNOUNCEMENT

In response to the announcement this weekend that both Israel and Hamas would cease fire in Gaza, Diane Balser, executive director of Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, issued the following statement:

“We welcome Israel’s decision Saturday to cease fire in Gaza, as well as Hamas’s announcement yesterday that they will follow suit. The crisis in Gaza has reminded the world of the threat that the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict poses not just to the Israelis and Palestinians, but to the stability of the entire region and all those who have a stake in it. We hope that this realization combined with the cessation of hostilities, will create both the political will and the political space to reinvigorate the negotiations necessary to finally resolve this conflict.

As American Jews deeply committed to Israel’s long-term peace and security, we urge President Obama to make it a top priority for his new administration to use what is likely be a brief window of opportunity presented by the ceasefire to bring all parties to the conflict together to negotiate a permanent, and enforceable agreement.

We are concerned that the absence of diplomatic agreement in reaching a ceasefire has left unresolved many of the issues that led to the crisis in the first place--the restrictions on the flow of humanitarian supplies in to Gaza, Hamas’ rocketing of Southern Israel and the smuggling of weapons from Egypt, chief among them— providing dangerous grounds for future conflagration.

While Israel’s military offensive has weakened Hamas military capabilities in the short run, the combined effect of the dramatic increase in popular support for Hamas, the undercutting of the Palestinian moderates, and the failure to substantively address the very factors that prompted the invasion, will likely prove to have brought Israel no closer to achieving the security it desires and deserves.

This fundamentally political conflict cannot be resolved by military means. It is time to break this cycle by active American diplomatic engagement from the first day of the Obama administration.”

 

Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, the Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace, is a national grassroots organization more than 40,000 strong that educates and mobilizes American Jews in support of a negotiated two-state resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.