Bulldozing the Roadmap: Caterpillar Sales to Israel Violate Conditions of US Aid

Action Alert: Write a letter to the Caterpillar Board of Directors, telling them that the business of destruction doesn't pay.

By Liat Weingart and Mitchell Plitnick

The Bush administration took an important step forward last week in promising to reduce loan guarantees to Israel in the amount spent to construct settlements in the West Bank. One of the central demands of the Roadmap is that Israel freeze settlement construction in the West Bank and Gaza. And yet over the years, the United States has given mixed signals about Israel's construction of settlements

For decades, the United States has said that settlement construction, which requires confiscating Palestinian land and demolishing Palestinian homes, is a central obstacle to peace in the Middle East. In fact, US law specifies that American aid to Israel is to be spent solely within the borders of Israel proper, not in the Occupied Territories. Yet every year, the US government uses taxpayer money to pay the Peoria, Illinois-based Caterpillar Corporation for bulldozers built primarily for the purpose of destroying Palestinian homes.

Since 1967, human rights workers estimate that Caterpillar bulldozers have made more than 50,000 Palestinians homeless, destroying homes that pave the way for new settlements and Israel's 400 kilometer long Wall, to which the US government has also expressed opposition. The equipment used to demolish Palestinian homes is not actually purchased by Israel - it's purchased by the US taxpayer and sent to Israel.

Though Israel is the single largest recipient of American aid, the US government has only rarely stood firm in its opposition to Israel's settlement construction. While the Bush administration is promising to make Israel pay for its evasion of peace, the US government is also missing a critical pipeline through which it funnels Israel tools that make peace impossible to achieve - the $3.1 billion of direct aid that Israel receives from the US. It is from this fund that Israel receives the bulldozers used to demolish homes in the West Bank, in contravention of US conditions that such aid be used only behind the Green Line.

Last year, Israel came under intense criticism from human rights organizations for its actions in the Jenin refugee camp. The image of a large section of that camp having been demolished continues to haunt Palestinians and Israelis. This was the work of Caterpillar's bulldozers. And last week, Israel again launched a large-scale invasion of Jenin, and reports state that a corps of engineers was part of the force conducting the attack. It is very possible that American made, and paid for, bulldozers will again be used to put Palestinian families out of their homes.

It is time for the American government to enforce US law by stopping the financing of these acts of Occupation. It is time for American corporations, like Caterpillar, to follow their social responsibility clauses and stop profiting from human rights abuses. Whatever hope remains for the Roadmap, or any other peace initiative, depends on it.

Liat Weingart and Mitchell Plitnick are co-directors of Jewish Voice for Peace, America's largest grassroots Jewish peace group. Weingart is an Israeli Jew from the coastal town of Netanya. Plitnick, from New York, has spent more than 20 years studying Jewish and Israeli history.