1.  Bills & Resolutions
 
(Emergency Supplemental - Jordan) HR 4899: Introduced 3/21/10 by Rep. Obey (D-WI), making emergency supplemental appropriations for FY10.  After much back-and-forth between the House and the Senate, passed by the Senate a final time on 7/22/10 and the House on 7/27/10 (identical versions) and sent to the President 7/29/20.  As noted in the Round-Up for the month of May 2010, the Senate amendment includes $100 million in ESF and $50 million in FMF for Jordan.
 
2.  Ros-Lehtinen Pushes for PLO to be expelled from Washington
 
In an example of spectacular anti-peace grandstanding, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) is circulating a Dear Colleague letter this week seeking cosigners on a letter to Secretary Clinton demanding that the PLO office be expelled from Washington and the PLO barred from operating on US soil, and demanding that the US embassy to Israel be moved immediately to Jerusalem. 
 
It should be noted that Ros-Lehtinen displayed no similar energy for expelling the PLO during the 8 years that President Bush was in office, despite the fact that for much of that time the Bush Administration and Israel had declared PLO head Yasser Arafat no longer a partner for peace and the second Intifada was raging.  Today the PLO is headed by President Mahmoud Abbas, who unequivocally opposes violence, has acknowledged the tough compromises Palestinians will have to make (including on the issue of refugees right of return) and the Jewish right to a homeland in the land of Palestine, and under whose leadership (along with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad) the Palestinian Authority has made enormous strides in improving security in the West Bank, building Palestinian government institutions in the past few years, and cracking down on hateful speech and incitement.  (For more on taking on the "Nos" commonly heard from anti-peace forces, like the one that argues that President Abbas is not a partner for peace, see APN and J Street's joint publication: "Turning No into Yes on the Two State Solution."
 
It is thus ironic (though sadly not surprising) that Ros-Lehtinen has decided that now is the time to press for returning the US relationship with the Palestinians to the pre-Oslo situation, when the official representatives of the Palestinians were treated as untouchable and unworthy of being either seen or heard.
 
It is also a very worrying sign of what could be the tone of the next Congress - if Republicans win the House in November, Ros-Lehtinen is set to become the Chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
 
Ros-Lehtinen's letter - a follow-up to her statement issued last week (and covered in last week's Round-Up) - is a reaction to two entirely symbolic changes in the way the PLO office operates in Washington.  Changes that reportedly came at the request of the PLO office and were agreed to by Israel - changes that were adopted mainly to reflect, in an entirely symbolic way, the fact that US relations with the Palestinians have improved greatly since the PLO was first permitted to come to Washington at the beginning of the peace process.  It should be noted that under the terms that were originally established (and subsequently expanded) for the PLO to maintain an office in Washington, the President must report to Congress every 120 days on the PLO's compliance with a laundry list of requirements (requirements that were written to be virtually impossible for the PLO to ever meet). 
 
3.  New APN publication: Top 6 Bogus Arguments for Opposing Extension of the Settlement Moratorium (or Adding Loopholes)
 
On 7/29/10 APN circulated the following message to all Congressional offices:
 
As we near the September 26th expiration of Israel's 10-month moratorium on new settlement starts nears, we are hearing rumblings from Israeli officials to the effect that the moratorium cannot be extended, or that it can be extended only if huge new loopholes are added.  And, disturbingly, we are seeing indications that some people in Washington - including people who should know better - may be taking these arguments seriously.
 
We find ourselves in a situation of déjà vu - as in, these are arguments that we heard throughout much of 2009, in the context of the original battle over the moratorium.  At that time, we responded with a Q &A entitled, "Top 5 Bogus Excuses for Opposing a Settlement Freeze" - intended to put to rest, once and for all, the most common and resilient of the arguments against a settlement freeze or for loopholes in a freeze.
 
Today we are issuing an update that we are calling:  "Top 6 Bogus Arguments for Opposing Extension of the Moratorium or for Adding Loopholes."  We hope that for the sake of Israel and for Middle East peace you will read it carefully.
 
Please contact me if you have any questions or need any further information.
 
Sincerely,
 
Lara Friedman
Director of Policy and Government Relations
Americans for Peace Now
 
Settlements in Focus
"Top 6 Bogus Arguments for Opposing Extension of the Settlement Moratorium or for Adding Loopholes" (Vol.6, Issue 5)
 
---------------------
As made clear in our previous analyses of the settlement moratorium, settlement construction since November 2009 has by no means been frozen.  Indeed, so much construction has been permitted under "exceptions" that the moratorium would have to be extended, with no new loopholes, for at least a year before construction on the ground would actually stop.  
 
Extending the current 10-month settlement moratorium, with no new loopholes or exceptions, is vital to Israel and to peace.  Failing to do so will have a devastating impact on efforts to launch successful peace talks and will play into the hands of those who seek to delegitimize Israel. New settlement construction will be seen as a sign that Israel would rather rule over Palestinians than forge peace.
 ---------------------
 
Bogus argument #1 - "Politically, Netanyahu cannot extend the moratorium and survive":  "On July 28th Prime Minister Netanyahu reportedly told the Spanish foreign minister that if the settlement freeze is extended his government will fall.  How can anyone ask Netanyahu to do something that will be politically suicidal?"
 
Fact:  Contrary to the expectations of many observers, Netanyahu's coalition continues to be stable. His right-wing coalition partners - Yisrael Beiteinu (Leiberman), Shas and the Jewish Home - know that they have no alternative but to stay in the government, recognizing that if they leave the coalition to protest the extension of the settlement moratorium, the Kadima party will quickly take their place.
 
Indeed, the fact that this right-wing government survived the adoption of theoretically the most far-reaching settlement freeze in history shows that when pressed, this government can abandon its hard-line rhetoric for more pragmatic policies, with no real cost to the coalition itself or from any external opposition (serious opposition from the right is almost non-existent, since most of the right-wing parties are in the coalition).  This demonstrated stability undermines any political excuses Netanyahu might offer for refusing to extend the freeze past September.
 
Moreover, nobody should forget that nearly eight months into the moratorium - and after nearly eight months of complaints from the settlers - there is still no real public Israeli outcry or objection to the moratorium or any public outcry against extending it.  Indeed, while the settlers continue to try to capture the Israeli public's attention and sympathy for their cause, what they encountered from the start has primarily been Israeli popular indifference.
 
The likelihood of the settlers being able to mobilize large-scale Israeli popular opposition to extending the moratorium  - especially in the face of what will no doubt be a high political cost for Israel if it decides to end the moratorium - is extremely low, and the settlers and the government no doubt know this.
 
On the other hand, the likelihood of the Israeli public being unhappy about strained US-Israel ties (not to mention further international censure) over a decision to end the moratorium - a decision that will be of benefit solely to the settlers - is extremely high.
 
Bogus argument #2 - "Settlement "Blocs": "On July 20th Israeli Intelligence Minister Dan Meridor said that 'it would be right to build in places that are destined to be part of the State of Israel, in the settlement blocs and the communities along the [separation] fence.'  The fact is, everyone knows that these areas will become part of Israel, so why not let Israel go ahead and build?"
 
Fact:  This argument suggests that settlements, not negotiations, will decide final borders.  In doing so it contradicts what both Israel and the Palestinians agreed to in the Oslo Accords - that borders are a final-status issue to be determined by negotiations.  Settlement construction even within so-called blocs destroys the credibility of Palestinian moderates, like President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad, who reject violence and tell their people that negotiations with Israel are the correct way forward.
 
This argument also contradicts the position of every US Administration.  This includes the Bush Administration.  Supporters of settlements are fond of recalling the part of President Bush's April 14, 2004 letter to Ariel Sharon stating that "In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949."  They tend to forget that in the preceding sentence President Bush said that any agreement to this effect "should emerge from negotiations between the parties" and in the next sentence added the caveat that "any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities" [emphasis added].
 
Moreover, the issue of construction in settlement blocs is not nearly as clear-cut as settlement advocates would have people believe.
 
"Settlement bloc" is an informal term, having no legal definition or standing, either under Israeli or international law. It is generally understood to refer to areas where settlements have been established in relatively close proximity to one another and relatively close (as a cluster) to the Green Line, but this definition does not capture the real scope of the issue.  
 
Throughout the history of Israeli settlement in the West Bank, Israel has left the blocs undefined, enabling their unofficial borders to grow year after year, as construction has systematically thickened and expanded them to include settlements and land located at a greater distance from their centers. The blocs and the settlements they contain are not recognized by the Palestinians or the international community as having any special status compared to other settlements, either now or in terms of a future peace agreement. Moreover, many of these "blocs" include what even Israel recognizes to be private Palestinian land.
 
The route of the West Bank barrier gives some indication of Israel's definition of the "blocs" - that is, Israelis assume that what is on the Israeli side of the barrier is part of the "blocs," and what is on the Palestinian side of the barrier is not. However, this definition ignores the fact that the route of the barrier has been gerrymandered to include as many settlements as possible and to encompass huge areas of adjacent land. As a result, while the built-up area of the settlements on the "Israeli" side of the barrier is approximately 7,300 acres, the total area of West Bank land that is de facto annexed by the barrier is approximately 148,000 acres, or around 20 times the size of the built-up area of the settlements. Thus, while many may wish to portray these "blocs" as something that is non-controversial, the situation on the ground tells a very different story.
 
For example:
 
- In the case of the "Ma'ale Adumim bloc" (east of Jerusalem), the barrier route takes up land many times the size of Ma'ale Adumim, including the area of the planned mega-settlement of E1, a settlement whose construction successive US administrations have recognized as potentially fatal to the two-state solution.
 
- In the case of the "Givat Ze'ev bloc" (north of Jerusalem), the barrier route extends so far north of the existing settlement that if construction were permitted to fill the bloc, the settlement could expand at least 5 times in size and reach the very edge of Ramallah - bearing in mind that construction is now underway in this "bloc" for a new ultra-Orthodox settlement (whose residents have an average of 7 children).
 
- In the case of the "Etzion bloc" (south of Jerusalem), the route of the barrier not only captures a huge amount of territory that is not part of the built-up area of the settlements, but it extends deep into the West Bank to include the settlement of Efrat, and in doing so severs Bethlehem completely from the southern West Bank (leaving the city of Bethlehem an isolated enclave between the southern Jerusalem barrier and the Gush Etzion bloc).
 
- Further north, in the case of the "Ariel bloc" and "Qedumim bloc," these blocs are actually narrow fingers reaching deep inside the West Bank - with the settlement of Ariel, for example, located almost exactly halfway between the Green Line and the Jordan River. Regardless of ideology, it is difficult to imagine a viable peace agreement that leaves these areas under Israeli control.
 
Based on past negotiations, including the unofficial Geneva Initiative process, it seems likely that Palestinians will be willing to accept a peace agreement under which Israel retains control of some settlements, but only in return for (a) the evacuation of all other settlements and (b) land swaps, equal in size and quality, to compensate for the land kept by Israel. This is an important principle that, in the context of serious peace negotiations, could play a key role in the achievement of a viable final status agreement. However, it is disingenuous to cherry-pick this principle in order to justify new settlement construction outside the context of such negotiations and absent a peace agreement.
 
For more on the issue of settlements blocs, see our earlier publication: "Settlement Bloc(kages) on the Road to Peace"
 
Bogus argument #3 - "Natural Growth": "For the past 10 months settlers have been in limbo - they are still having babies, their children have been growing up and getting married, etc., as is the right of any human being anywhere, but they can't live their lives normally.  Even if the moratorium is renewed, new construction must be permitted to accommodate this 'natural growth' in settlements."
 
Fact: While "natural growth" has no formal definition, it has generally been used in the settler context to mean population growth due to births, as contrasted to growth due to immigration from Israel or other places. But in numerical terms (according to Israeli official statistics), taking into account deaths and people migrating out of settlements, births inside the settlements account for approximately 60% of the annual population growth in settlements, while around 40% is immigration from inside Israel or abroad. So clearly population growth in settlements is not simply a matter of births.  Perhaps this is why some excuse-makers have expanded "natural growth" to include others ways that families can grow, from non-settler spouses to aged non-settler relatives moving in.
 
Regardless of what definition people want to use, the fact is that "natural growth" is not a legitimate argument against a complete freeze in settlement construction. Yes, settlers, like people everywhere, indeed have the right to have babies, and yes, their children indeed have the right to grow up and have families and homes of their own. But nowhere in the world - not in New York, or Paris, or Tel Aviv - do people have an inalienable right to live exactly where they want - in the size home they want, in the neighborhood they want - irrespective of real estate market factors, or any political, economic, zoning, or other considerations that may come into play (including in this case, considerations about actual land ownership). Inside Israel, just like in other countries, people regularly face difficult decisions about where to live, given that major cities like Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are crowded and little affordable housing is available.
 
Settlers have the right to have babies and to take in their parents or grandparents. When settler children grow up they have the right to start families and have homes of their own. But the settlers must do what people everywhere must do: reconcile their needs as best as possible to the housing market, which is affected not only by demand but by a myriad of other variables - including, in this case, the fact that settlers have knowingly and voluntarily chosen to make their lives on land that is the subject of a political dispute of global proportions.
 
Bogus argument #4: "Building inside, but not expanding, settlements": "It was unreasonable from the start to demand a stop to construction even inside settlements. Why shouldn't settlement construction be able to continue so long as it does not use up any new land? The issue is expanding settlements and construction inside settlements is not expansion."
 
Fact: When it comes to freezing settlements, previous US administrations discovered that the devil is in the details. While it may sound reasonable - nothing more than a minor detail, perhaps - to agree that settlers can continue to build so long as the perimeters of settlements are not expanding, past experience has taught that the definition of "inside a settlement" and "expanding" can be quite flexible in the eyes of the settlers and the Israeli government.
 
To think about this more concretely:
 
- place your hand on a hard surface, splay your fingers wide apart, and take a pen and trace your handprint. Your handprint represents the built-up area of a settlement.
- draw another line connecting your fingers and your thumb. This line represents the land the settlers might argue is, in effect, already part of the built-up area, even if it has no buildings on it yet.
- draw a circle around the handprint, leaving a few inches of empty space between this new line and the handprint inside. This line represents the security fence surrounding the settlement, which the settlers might argue is already in effect the "footprint" of the settlement on the ground, since this area is wholly under the settlement's control.
- draw another much larger circle around the previous circle. This represents the municipal area of the settlement, which the settlers might argue is legally and officially part of the settlement, even if they have not built on it yet.
 
It is this argument over lines - with settlers looking to exploit any loophole they can find in order to permit more expansion of settlements - that has led past US administrations into the trap of seemingly endless and irresolvable negotiations over how to decide what it means to build "inside" settlements.
 
This is not a debate over semantics. Many settlements have far-flung "neighborhoods" that, if used as the basis for the "construction line," would permit massive expansion. Most settlements have security fences surrounding them, meaning that this larger area of land is already off-limits to Palestinians. And nearly all settlements have a municipal area many times the size of the built-up area of the settlement - indeed, while the built-up area of settlements takes up less than 2% of the West Bank, fully 9.3% of the West Bank is included within the officially declared municipal boundaries of these settlements; permitting expansion inside these areas would allow settlements to grow many times over.
 
Some will argue that the difference between construction inside settlements and expansion of settlements is like pornography: you know it when you see it. However, opening this loophole is dangerous, creating a situation where the US will be called on to constantly "referee" what is and isn't permitted. This is neither a smart nor useful way for the US to be expending its diplomatic energies and political capital, and will only cater to settler mischief-makers who are ready and eager to exploit any loophole available.
 
Bogus argument #5 - "Already Approved Construction": "Israel can't keep freezing construction that was already approved. People have been issued building permits in good faith and have in good faith invested time and money in building and buying new homes. It is not fair to just keep them in limbo - they have to be allowed to build."
 
Fact: First, tens of thousands of units have been approved for construction, but not yet built, in West Bank settlements. This is according to a report prepared by Gen. Baruch Spiegel, which documented all the approved plans for settlements and estimated the number of completed versus approved structures. If this approved but not-yet-completed construction is allowed to go forward, it would massively expand the number of settlement units, and settlers, in the West Bank. So those who argue that already approved construction is a trivial matter are either misinformed or deliberately fudging the facts.
 
Second, the government of Israel has the authority to stop settlement projects that are already well-advanced in the approval process - and this is exactly what it did with the current moratorium.  And if people need to be compensated financially for losses due to the freeze, this is something the government of Israel can do under the current moratorium, just as it did in the case of Rabin's 1992 settlement freeze, under which some projects were frozen and some compensation granted.
 
Indeed, savvy observers in Israel note that there is one sure way to know when an Israeli settlement freeze is serious: when the government of Israel begins budgeting for the compensation of settlers and investors.
 
Bogus argument #6 - "There are no subsidies or incentives": "Settlements are growing due to natural market forces - people want to live there - not because of government incentives. Government subsidies for settlements stopped years ago."
 
Fact: Few Americans (or Israelis for that matter) probably realize that despite the settlement moratorium the government of Israel is still providing significant incentives - preferential benefits over and above what people receive inside Israel - to entice people to live in and move to settlements.
 
Almost a decade ago, then-Minister of Finance, Binyamin Netanyahu, drastically cut subsidies for settlements (as well as for other purposes), due to economic considerations. However, this was less an end to such subsidies than a diminishing and re-categorization of subsidies. Today, it is correct to say that there are no subsidies in place defined as especially for settlements. Instead there is a system of incentives in place for communities that Israel defines as "preferred development areas" - and the various lists of these areas (different ministries use different lists) have included, at least up until this point, not only parts of the Galilee and the Negev, but the majority of West Bank settlements as well.  Peace Now's full report on the special benefits provided to settlements, as well as information on the higher standard of living in settlements, is available in English here.
 
In addition, while it is true that there is high demand for housing in some settlements and settlement "blocs" - including areas where incentives like the ones listed above are less prevalent - this demand is not due to "natural" market forces. Rather, it is due to a political decision of the government of Israel to use construction in the West Bank, rather than inside Israel, to meet Israel's housing needs.
 
For example, it is well known that there is a shortage of affordable housing, particularly for families, in Jerusalem. Rather than build new housing in West Jerusalem or in the western suburbs of the city, the government has instead focused on nearby areas of the West Bank - in particular Ma'ale Adumim. It is thus not surprising that demand for housing in this settlement is high. However, this is not "natural" market demand: if similar housing had been built west of the city, the demand would likely have been equally high, given that residents of Ma'ale Adumim are largely people who move to the West Bank for quality-of-life reasons, not ideology.
 
Similarly, Israel's ultra-Orthodox community is bursting at the seams, with an average of around 7 children per family and a constant need for new housing.  They prefer to live in segregated, homogeneous communities. Rather than build additional communities for the ultra-Orthodox inside Israel, the government has elected to build a new city for them in the West Bank (Givat Ze'ev Illit), north of Jerusalem. It is thus not surprising that demand for housing in this new settlement is high. However, this is not "natural" market demand: in similar cities that were built inside the green line (for example, Elad and Ramat Bet Shemesh), the demand for housing is similar.
 
Finally, the government of Israel has invested tremendous sums of money in infrastructure in the West Bank to transform even remote settlements to convenient suburbs of Israeli cities. For example, the government invested millions of shekels to build a new road to bypass Bethlehem from the east and connect the small settlements of Tekoa and Noqdim (where Foreign Minister Lieberman lives) to Jerusalem from the south. In doing so, it transformed these isolated settlements into virtual suburbs of Jerusalem, whose residents enjoy a 10-minute, traffic-free commute to the city. It is not surprising that less than two years after the road was opened, we see today a construction "growth spurt" in Tekoa and Nokdim. But clearly, there is nothing "normal" or "free market" about this growth.
 
4.  Specter's Middle East Trip Report
 
On 7/28/10 Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA), a longtime courageous voice supporting Israeli-Syria peace efforts, spoke on the Senate floor about his July 3- July 11 travel to the Czech Republic, Israel, Syria, and Croatia.  He also entered into the record a statement about the trip.  The Middle East portions of those comments are included here, in full.
 
Specter:  "...The Mideast peace process is of enormous importance, not only to that region but to U.S. national security interests and to the interest of peace in the world. The Palestinian track seems to be stuck with the controversies over the neighborhoods, also referred to as the settlements. But the administration is hard at work through special envoy former Senator George Mitchell moving ahead on that line.
 
"I believe the time is ripe now for movement on the Israel-Syria track. I say that based on the conversations I had with Israeli and Syrian officials. I was invited to come to Damascus. I have been to Syria on many occasions in the past, starting in 1984. I have been there some 19 times. This was the first time that I received a specific invitation from President Bashar al-Assad to come there. I believe that is an indication, which President Assad is very open about, of his interest in having peace talks with Israel without preconditions.
 
"He immediately follows that with a statement that Syria has a right to the Golan Heights. But it is no surprise that this is being asserted from the Syrian point of view.
 
"Only Israel should decide for itself whether it wishes to trade the Golan for other national security interests, for concerns about Hezbollah and Hamas and the link with Iran--whatever effect there may be with the Iranian-Syrian relationship and the stabilization of Lebanon. But it is a different world today than it was in 1967 in an era of rockets, so the security interests are very different.
 
"The Israelis and the Syrians came very close to a peace agreement in 1995 and again in the year 2000. Turkey had been brokering talks between Israel and Syria, but the Turkish envoys have withdrawn after the so-called flotilla incident, asking Israel for an apology. Since none is forthcoming, the Turks are not brokering that issue. So it seems to me with the role the United States played, the very active role of former President Clinton--with U.S. participation I believe the prospects are good and there could be a treaty there.
 
"Israel has significant potential gains--to stop the shelling by Hamas from the south and the threat and potential shelling from Hezbollah from the north, and also the relationship between Syria and Iran. President Assad said to me that Iran supports Syria, but Syria does not support Iran. With the recent action by Syria in changing the veiling requirement, it is an indication that Syria is pursuing being a secular state with significant differences from the practices in Iran. If it should become the national interest of Syria to side with the West, that is a potential which ought to be explored. It is not going to happen overnight, but it is something worth thinking about and worth considering..."
 
Excerpt from Specter's statement for the record:
 
"...We spent most of July 6 traveling to Israel from the Czech Republic. This was my 27th visit to Israel in my capacity as a Senator. The following day, I had a series of meetings with Palestinian Liberation Organization negotiator Dr. Saeb Erekat, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, Israeli Opposition Leader Tzipi Livni, Israeli President Simon Peres, and finally had a dinner meeting with Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon.
 
"My first meeting of the day was with Dr. Saeb Erekat in Ramallah, someone I have gotten to know very well over the past 15 years. We opened the meeting with a discussion about the prospects for peace. Dr. Erekat immediately said that peace was obtainable--very much in reach--and the next move lay in the hands of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I mentioned that I would be meeting with Israeli President Peres later that day and Syrian President Assad the following day. Erekat told me to speak to Israel about using Turkey to resume the indirect talks between Israel and Syria. According to him, it was both his and President Abbas's position that it was in the Palestinians' interest for Syria and Israel to resume talks and that the current tension between Israel and Turkey benefitted no party.
 
"That afternoon I remained in Ramallah to meet with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. He said he is focusing on growing the economy in order to undercut peoples' reliance on Hamas for basic needs. Prime Minister Fayyad was optimistic that the Palestinian Authority can regain control of the government from Hamas in the upcoming elections.
 
"I raised the issue of Israel's talks through Turkey with Syria. Prime Minister Fayyad was skeptical of the utility of this track, and indicated his belief that the best course forward is to formulate a joint public document outlining the key issues which need to be resolved to make peace. He also discussed his belief that concerted U.S. involvement could greatly improve the chances of success.
 
"I asked the Prime Minister if there were other ways the U.S. could be helpful and he explained that much of the progress on moving the economy and infrastructure has come from USAID, including more than $2.9 billion since 1994 for programs in the areas of water, sanitation, infrastructure, education, health care, economic growth and democracy.
 
"After meeting with Prime Minister Fayyad, we returned to Jerusalem where I met with Israeli Opposition Party Leader Tzipi Livni. We opened the discussions talking about Israel's indirect talks with Syria through Turkey. She indicated her belief that an agreement was 'feasible'.
 
"I proceeded to ask her about Prime Minister Fayyad's assertion that there will be no peace between Israel and the Palestinians until the Palestinians are united. In her view talks between Israeli and Palestinians could proceed, and when an agreement is reached it could be presented to Hamas--where they would be given a choice work together or be seen as an obstructionist minority.
 
"That evening I joined Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Daniel Ayalon for dinner. We became friends when he served as Israel's ambassador to the United States. I opened the discussion by expressing Dr. Erekat's position that if Prime Minister Netanyahu were serious about peace, a deal could be made. Ayalon responded by stating that peace was on the table in November of 2008 and was rejected by the Palestinians.
 
"During my meeting with Dr. Erekat, he mentioned a situation where Minister of Foreign Affairs Avigdor Lieberman would not shake his hand, so I raised the issue with Deputy Foreign Minister Ayalon. He denied the account and referred to Lieberman's oft-quoted remark that he would give his own house for peace with the Palestinians.
 
"Before concluding dinner, Ayalon asked me to return with two messages to the U.S. The first was to pass a request shorten the life sentence for Jonathan Pollard, a former civilian intelligence analyst who was convicted of spying for Israel. The second was to express appreciation for the funds stemming from the United States-Israel Energy Cooperation Act of 2007, which authorizes grants to encourage collaboration between the U.S. and Israel in the research, development, and commercialization of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies. The $4 million appropriated to date by Congress for this program has been matched 100 percent by the Israeli Government. Funding has gone to support eight collaborative projects between Israelis and American universities and private companies, including a company based in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. With this funding Israel hopes to reduce its oil dependence by 50 percent.
 
"The next morning we flew to Syria--my 19th trip to the country--via Jordan to meet with President Bashar al-Assad. I have gotten to know President Bashar al-Assad well over the past decade, just as I knew his father, Hafez al-Assad. I opened my meeting with President Assad by expressing regret that the U.S. Senate had not acted to confirm Robert Ford to be the Ambassador to Syria, in addition to ambassadors to other important countries and international bodies. President Assad replied that he was very pleased by President Obama's signal that he wanted an American ambassador in Damascus.
 
"I continued the conversation by recounting a discussion I had recently with Syria's Ambassador to the United States, Imad Moustapha, in which we discussed the opportunity to restart talks between Israel and Syria. President Assad expressed great openness to resuming the talks with Turkey as the broker.
 
"I pressed Assad on Syria's alleged sale of Scud missiles to Hezbollah and his support for Hamas and Hezbollah. He asked for proof on the missile issue and denied the charge. He said that once there was a Syria-Israeli peace agreement there would no longer be a reason for any concern about missiles. Hezbollah or Hamas.
 
"In discussing Iran, President Assad suggested the U.S. work to improve its relationship with Iran by further pursuing diplomatic engagement.
 
"As I have done in previous conversations with President Assad, I expressed my desire that he allow forensic teams into his country on the missing Israeli soldiers issue. I also raised again my request that the remains of Eli Cohen be returned to Israel--or, at a bare minimum, allow a kaddish to be said over his remains by his widow and a rabbi. He said those matters would have to await a Syria-Israeli peace treaty.
 
"Finally, at the urging of the Charge, I asked that recent changes to Syrian visa regulations--which seem to target Americans--be reversed in light of the fact that the U.S. has reduced visa wait periods for Syrians and lifted the Travel Warning for Syria. President Assad said he would look into this situation.
 
========================================
Don't forget to check the APN blog for breaking news and analysis about issues related to Israel, the Middle East, and the Hill.
========================================
  
Americans for Peace Now promotes Israeli security through the peace process and supports the Israeli Peace Now movement.   For more information, visit the APN web site at www.peacenow.org or contact Lara Friedman, APN Director of Policy and Government Relations, at 202/728-1893, or at lfriedman@peacenow.org.