Campaign Offers Support for Diplomacy

Forward Staff

Washington DC - The chairman and the vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission are among

the 100 prominent Americans who have helped launch a campaign to build public

support for American efforts to achieve a two-state solution in Israel.

The chairman, former Republican governor of New Jersey Thomas Kean, and the vice

chairman, former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton of Indiana, have both signed an

online petition unveiled last week aimed at galvanizing support for American

peacemaking efforts. The effort is being organized by the Campaign for American

Leadership in the Middle East, a non-partisan group that operates the newly create

Web site Mideastcalm.org.

The petition's objective is not to create another organization, but to show

President Bush he has the vast majority of Americans standing behind him as he

begins what the group hopes is a sustained effort to bring forth a diplomatic

solution, several leaders of the group said.

"President Bush has committed himself to a Palestinian state in four years," said

Hamilton, the former chairman of the House International Relations Committee, during

the group's opening press conference last week. "No issue polarizes relations

between the U.S. and the Arab-Islamic world more than this one. Stabilizing Iraq,

reducing Iranian and Syrian influence, spreading democracy - are all tied to peace

between Israel and the Palestinians."

Another of the group's leaders, former New Hampshire governor Jeanne Shaheen, said:

"I believe that's because people here understand - whether they're from Nashua, New

Hampshire, or Cedar Rapids, Iowa - that what happens between the Palestinians and

Israelis will affect us. In this post-September 11 world, we have come to understand

that violence and terrorism in one part of the world can lead to violence and

terrorism here at home."

Joel Tauber, a longtime Jewish communal leader from Detroit, said at the press

conference, "It's my firm conviction that we have the best opportunity for peace

since the founding of the State of Israel." The drive, he said, "is to ask the

president to remain focused and active."

Other supporters of the petition drive include: former secretary of state Madeleine

Albright; former senators George Mitchell, a Democrat from Maine, Warren Rudman, a

Republican from New Hampshire and Alan Simpson, a Republican from Wyoming; former

Michigan governor James Blanchard, a Democrat, and Seymour Reich, president of the

Israel Policy Forum and past chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major

American Jewish Organizations.

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Source: The Forward, April 22, 2005.

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