Tell Congress to Support Palestinian Aid for Peace

Write your member of Congress today to let them know that you support continued U.S. aid to the Palestinians. Tell your representatives in Washington that U.S. financial assistance is helping provide the building blocks for peace.

The security, education, healthcare programs for ordinary Palestinians that U.S. aid supports should not become pawns in the politics of a UN confrontation. Don’t stand by and let these punitive measures become a part of U.S. policy.

Tell your elected officials that you support continued U.S. aid to Palestinians and the UN agencies that support them and that it is time to move past punitive measures and begin to lay the building blocks for a future peace.

Members of Congress have placed a hold on U.S. aid funds already appropriated for the previous fiscal year, resulting in projects already underway also on hold and many Palestinian workers not getting their salaries.

Of even greater concern are the threats coming from Congress, in response to the Palestinian bid at the UN, that would decimate support for the Palestinian Authority, and funding for humanitarian programs and projects throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In the House of Representatives, the draft text of the State Department and Foreign Operations Appropriations bill and the United Nations reform bill, H.R. 2829, both seek to decimate U.S. funding for the Palestinian Authority and programs that support Palestinian people. In the Senate, the appropriations bill to fund the State Department and Foreign Operations (S.1601) also places new and additional conditions on U.S. foreign aid to the Palestinian people and government.

No matter what the outcome at the United Nations, dramatic cuts in U.S. aid, the largest single-state donor to the Palestinians, are dangerous. The suggested cuts would decimate the dramatic security and quality-of-life improvements that have been achieved in the West Bank and would be detrimental to the security of Israelis and Palestinians alike, not to mention U.S. interests in the region.

Write your member of Congress today and let them know that you believe that the called-for funding cuts are detrimental to U.S., Israeli, and Palestinian interests alike.  Let them know that you support continued U.S. aid to the Palestinians and the UN agencies that assist them because this aid helping to lay the groundwork for a future peace.