My friends in America,

Last Sunday, we at Peace Now demonstrated outside the inaugural ceremony for the “Pilgrimage Road” tunnel at Jerusalem’s Old City Basin.

While the tunnel exposes a meaningful archeological discovery, it was built recklessly by the settler group Elad under the homes of the Palestinian residents of Silwan, a neighborhood in East Jerusalem, which Palestinians claim as part of their future capital.

For us, the most infuriating part of this ceremony was the participation of Trump's “peace” team: Ambassador David Friedman and Special Envoy Jason Greenblatt.

The gall these men have to posture about advancing regional peace and simultaneously give official American backing to a key project in the settlers’ grand strategy on disputed land, all while joyfully knocking down walls under the foundations of Palestinian homes, is unconscionable.

It should be clear that the Trump and Netanyahu administrations are not striving in good faith to keep the promise of peace alive; they are pouring oil onto the fire, trying to make a future two-state solution impossible.

We will not let the combined forces of the far right in our two countries turn East Jerusalem into an ideological Disneyland at the cost of dispossessing Palestinians of their homes and at the cost of perpetual conflict. We will not let the governments of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu quash the hope for an Israeli-Palestinian two-state agreement.

Help us sustain our efforts to continue demonstrating, to speak before the Israeli public, to legally fight to preserve the integrity of Jerusalem and prospects for peace, and to prevent this already intractable national conflict from turning into an explosive, endless religious war.

We will not give up!

Shaqued Morag
Executive Director
Peace Now