David Price: “almost exactly a year ago, I joined a bipartisan group of Members in visiting the Hope Flowers School in the Palestinian…”

“almost exactly a year ago, I joined a bipartisan group of Members in visiting the Hope Flowers School in the Palestinian village of al Khader, just outside of Bethlehem on the West Bank. Hope Flowers teaches its students a curriculum promoting tolerance, nonviolence, democracy and peaceful coexistence. Our bipartisanship delegation witnessed the signing of a USAID agreement to renovate several classrooms and other key facilities at the school. Projects like this are supported by the United States throughout the Palestinian territories. Other projects are paying for modern school books to ensure that fundamentalist propaganda has no place in Palestinian schools; potable water projects to prevent the spread of disease, economic development to improve job prospects for Palestinian youth, and construction of hospitals, schools, sewers, power grids and business centers. These types of projects are critical to our interests, to Israel, and to the prospects for peace. They help prevent humanitarian crises and diminish popular discontent, and they also inculcate values like those taught at Hope Flowers. They train peacemakers; they improve America's standing in the Middle East. Why would we want to eliminate programs like these? Are they not needed now more than ever? And yet that is exactly what H.R. 4681 would do. It would cut off U.S. assistance to the West Bank and Gaza. Mr.…”