24 May 2021
The Honorable Antony J. Blinken
Secretary of State
U.S. Department of State
Washington, D.C. 20520
Dear Secretary Blinken
I write on behalf of the US Council of Muslim Organizations and members of the American Muslim community urging you and President Joseph Biden in your imminent diplomatic visit and discussions with Israeli and Palestinian leaders to fulfill the moral duty of this nation and your many campaigns and administration pledges to center American foreign policy – its military and humanitarian aid, its strategic and intelligence cooperation and assistance, and its international support for democracy and freedom.
It is imperative that you state clearly and publically to the Israeli political, military, and institutional heads that the U.S. will live up to its own laws and those of the international community – and will no longer go against the rising moral outrage of the American people – and WITHHOLD providing any material or diplomatic assistance – militarily, politically, or otherwise – until the Israeli leadership fulfills eleven (11) internationally verified changes:
- Cease immediately the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the depraved “legalization” of the appropriations of their property and land – in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza.
- Cease immediately the 14-year internationally illegal siege of Gaza.
- Cease immediately its occupation of all lands, including the West Bank and Gaza.
- Disband immediately all 132 illegal settlements in the West Bank, all 135 illegal outposts across Palestinian territories, and restore and safeguard the property rights of all Palestinians forcibly removed from their homes in and around Jerusalem, including the more than 70 families of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem. This must include the immediate removal of the more than 650,000 illegal Israeli settler-colonists from these Palestinian lands and properties – all in violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, prohibiting Occupying Powers from transferring their populations into the territory it occupies.
- Repeal immediately the apartheid Israeli Nation-State Law that asserts “the right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people,” that a “united” Jerusalem is the “capital of Israel,” and that the state will “act to encourage and promote [the] establishment and consolidation” of Jewish settlements – Israeli settler-colonial establishments that are against American and international law.
- Bring down the Israeli separation wall dividing Palestinian communities and peoples and declared illegal by a UN court, along with immediately removing all illegal checkpoints designed to categorically prevent the free movement of Palestinians, and their goods, in their own country and on their own lands and to systematically humiliate them.
- Cease military, police, and extremist militant Zionist incursions of violence and desecration into the Haram Al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary, the entire 35-acre hilltop of which is in total Islam’s Holy Sanctuary of Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa – including into the silver-domed Mosque of the Prayer Direction (Al-Masjid Al-Qibali) and the golden-domed Mosque of the Dome of the Rock (Qubbat Aṣ-Ṣakhrah).
- Cease all Israeli police, settler, and Jewish citizen brutality against the Palestinian and Arab citizenry in the pre-1948 lands.
- Acknowledge in law immediately the Palestinian Right of Return for all Palestinian refugees and internally displaced and their descendants to the homes and lands from which Zionist terrorist groups and later Israeli militia apparatus ethnically cleansed them, without discrimination based on ethnicity, religion, or any other classification.
- Cease immediately the political detention of Palestinians – including children, women, and men – and release all political prisoners, while striking its internationally illegal and morally reprehensible laws of indefinite detention.
- Open – without condition, delay, or impediment – all humanitarian roads and access to UN, international, and Islamic humanitarian organizations and agencies including Muslim American relief organizations.
Secretary Blinken, the Israeli government stands now in violation of 28 binding UN resolutions – including but not limited to resolutions 54, 111, 233, 234, 236, 248, 250, 252, 256, 262, 267, 270, 280, 285, 298, 313, 316, 468, 476, and so on. The Israeli government is also a serial violator of the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law, including the Hague Regulation of 1907 and the Fourth Geneva Convention, regarding these humanitarian statutes and instruments: Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 1949, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. All these apply to the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
U.S. humanitarian agencies, our government, our media, and the American people are well aware of these ongoing, long-term, meticulously documented violations by the Israeli authorities. We cannot in good conscience continue as a proclaimed democratic nation vested in freedom for all – nor can the Biden administration continue – supporting materially and diplomatically this generational cascade of egregious Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity, of which our government has indefensibly become a prime accomplice and abettor.
We at USCMO and American Muslims call on President Biden and you to insist that the Israeli authorities, and the United States, carry out immediately the above-listed eleven itemized essential actions.
We also respectfully ask to meet with you about these humanitarian affairs of Palestine’s Muslims, Christians, and other oppressed groups, as well as other matters of urgent importance to the American Muslim community.
Sincerely
Oussama Jammal
Secretary-General
ojammal@uscmo.org