Tell Obama: Make Middle East peace a priority

Help make Middle East peace a top priority of the Obama administration. Vote this up on Change.gov. (But only if you’re comfortable with their privacy policy.*)

The crisis in Gaza is further evidence of the tragic consequences of American disengagement from Middle East diplomacy. President-elect Obama must make strong American leadership to bring about a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict an urgent priority of his foreign policy agenda, starting on day one.

Time is about to run out on the two-state solution. The U.S. can no longer simply facilitate discussions, we need to actively put the solutions on the table and bring the parties to agreement. Ending this conflict is an essential American interest, vital to our efforts to address other threats in the region and to restoring our reputation around the world.

This call for sensible U.S. policy in the Middle East was initiated by J Street.

*A relevant note, not necessarily intended to discourage folks from supporting this action, because I support it: Change.gov’s privacy policy is extremely problematic. The site is, on the one hand, a heartening attempt at government transparency and accountability, but on the other, because of both the vagueness and the unenforceability of the privacy policy, it could be viewed as an attempt to sucker people into giving the feds the keys to their Google accounts. If you’re worried they’ll get their hands on something they don’t already know, I recommend that you stay away. Not that I’ve got anything to hide, but I wish it had occurred to me to research the policybefore I’d signed up.