A coalition of 87 U.S. Senators and 209 House members from both political parties have criticized the Palestinians in a letter sent to President George W. Bush on Thursday, 5/4/2001. The letter urges President Bush to reconsider U.S. relations with the Palestinians, who they blame for “…the upsurge of violence in the Middle East.”

The appeal to President Bush urges him to reconsider whether or not U.S. funding to the Palestinians should continue and whether the PLO office in Washington should remain open. According to the lawmakers, the Palestinians have “…embarked on a deliberate campaign of violence against Israel.”

The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH) views with grave concern and dismay this unconscionable U.S. assessment of reality in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The signatories of the mentioned appeal to President Bush must seriously reconsider their statement, particularly in light of the ongoing massacres being committed by Israel against the Palestinian people.

Since Ariel Sharon’s provocative incursion into Al-Haram Al-Sharif (Holy Sanctuary) in Jerusalem last September, thus the outbreak of the ongoing Palestinian Intifada (uprising), 428 Palestinians have been killed in cold blood by Israeli security forces, including 138 children below the age of 18. The number of Palestinian casualties has almost reached 13,000, with more than 1,500 permanent disabilities.

Israel’s policy of political assassinations, extra-judicial killings, and abduction of targeted Palestinian political figures continues to this day unabated, and unquestioned by the U.S. in any way. Israel’s policy of economic and social strangulation against the Palestinian people, through multiple-siege on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, also remains unquestioned by the U.S.

The Palestinian people are living under Israeli occupation; this is a fact that is being willfully neglected by the signatories of the mentioned appeal. More dangerously, the signatories are neglecting the very right of the Palestinian people to liberty and justice, let alone to life itself.

The mentioned letter places blame on the victim rather than the oppressor, thus provoking more injustice against the Palestinians. In its role as peace-broker, the U.S. government must realize that an end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict can be achieved only by an end to Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and the return of the Palestinian refugees (in accordance with United Nations Resolutions 242, 338, 194, and the land-for-peace equation, initiated in Madrid in 1991, and formally adopted by all concerned parties, including the U.S., in Washington in 1993).