August 2009 Postcard

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DEAR PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:

In your address to the Muslim world from Cairo, you said, “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.”

As an honest broker of peace, the United States cannot allow Israel to continue its de facto colonization of the West Bank, including Jerusalem. The settlements, and the exclusionary roads connecting them, deprive Palestinians of realizing their inalienable right to exist in a free state of their own.

I stand with you on your call to freeze Israeli settlement growth, and encourage you to stand firm on the side of justice so that the two-state solution finally can be achieved.

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On June 29, 2009 Defense Minister Ehud Barak approved 29 new housing units in Har Homa (background), an Israeli settlement near the West Bank city of Bethlehem. (AFP photo/Musa Al-Shaer).

The Truth About “Natural Growth”:

The work of the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem shows that the expansion of settlements has hardly been natural. The growth rate of the settlements’ populations (4.7) is roughly three times that of Israel proper (1.6). Moreover, 40 percent of settlement growth comes from “Jews emigrating from Israel or abroad.”

Israel has provided “financial benefits and incentives” to entice Israelis to colonize the West Bank. For more information visit: <www.btselem.org/english/settlements/
migration.asp>.