Speaking before the annual AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington on Wednesday, Barack Obama made a significant break from moderate Israeli MKs and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. At issue: Arab neighborhoods in east Jerusalem that the opposition Likud refuses to concede to a Palestinian state.
Abbas sees east Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state, but hardliners have been pressuring Prime Minister Olmert and Secretary Rice for months to take the city limits off the table. Outlining his vision of Middle East policy to the pro-Israel lobby, Obama aligned himself with the more extreme elements (emphasis mine):
The Palestinians need a state that is contiguous and cohesive, and that allows them to prosper - but any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel's identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.
Abbas reacted with frustration. At its lowest point in months, the energy for an "undivided Jerusalem" may have been renewed by a powerful endorsement.
Obama strongly criticized the Bush administration's record on securing the region:
Hamas now controls Gaza. Hezbollah has tightened its grip on southern Lebanon, and is flexing its muscles in Beirut. Because of the war in Iraq, Iran - which always posed a greater threat to Israel than Iraq - is emboldened and poses the greatest strategic challenge to the United States and Israel in the Middle East in a generation. Iraq is unstable, and al-Qaida has stepped up its recruitment. Israel's quest for peace with its neighbors has stalled, despite the heavy burdens borne by the Israeli people. And America is more isolated in the region, reducing our strength and jeopardizing Israel's safety.
Unfortunately, [John McCain] continues to cling to a foreign policy that's failed to make the U.S. or Israel safer. Iran's nuclear program has continued during the course of the last several years, without abatement. Hamas and Hezbollah have grown stronger, not weaker. This has not only threatened our security, but Israel's as well.
As for diplomatic relations with the other side, Obama outlined preferential terms:
We must isolate Hamas unless and until they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel's right to exist, and abide by past agreements. There is no room at the negotiating table for terrorist organizations. That is why I opposed holding elections in 2006 with Hamas on the ballot.
I will strongly urge Arab governments to take steps to normalize relations with Israel, and to fulfill their responsibility to pressure extremists and provide real support for President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad.
"We consider the statements of Obama to be further evidence of the hostility of the American administration to Arabs and Muslims," Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri told AFP.
Unfortunately, Obama did not quit while ahead. Having aligned himself squarely behind Abbas, Obama made a significant break with the President as well as Israeli and American moderates (emphasis mine):
The Palestinians need a state that is contiguous and cohesive, and that allows them to prosper - but any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel's identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.
Abbas has consistently demanded that occupied neighborhoods in east Jerusalem comprise the capital of a future state. He felt no differently on Wednesday:
The whole world knows that East Jerusalem, holy Jerusalem, was occupied in 1967, and we will not accept a Palestinian state without having Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state.
Katz said the petition drive was intended to send a message to Olmert that he has no mandate to negotiate Jerusalem's future. In a further push to keep the future of Jerusalem on the agenda, the Likud faction will tour the walls of the Old City Tuesday and opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu will brief the foreign press at a strategic site overlooking the city.
"We view any attempt to divide the city as a tragic wedge that is unacceptable," said Rev. Malcolm Hedding, the executive director of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem.
Prime Minster Ehud Olmert and Vice Premier Haim Ramon have suggested the transfer of Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority. Evangelicals oppose such ideas as contradictory to the biblical promise of the Holy Land to the Jewish people.
Jerusalem will be divided. The question isn't whether, but when and how. The city's borders have been shifting for 3,000 years. Today's borders will not be tomorrow's. Already the security barrier cuts off some parts of the city, and the Palestinian Authority, with American funding, is to build a road linking east Jerusalem to Ramallah.
Ariel Sharon understood the inevitability of dividing the city; his initial plans for the security barrier included putting some Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem on the far side. American Jews who are increasingly demanding a voice in deciding the fate of Jerusalem understand the same reality; many oppose any change in the city's borders, including jettisoning Arab neighborhoods that were added only after 1967, because they oppose any and all land for peace deals with the Palestinians.
She first took the position in 1999, prior to announcing her candidacy for the U.S. Senate in New York. (It was later in the same campaign that Clinton was slammed for hugging and kissing Suha Arafat, the wife of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, at a ceremony on the West Bank, where Suha, speaking in Arabic, accused the Israeli government of using poison gas against Palestinian women and children. Hours after the event, Clinton condemned her.) "I personally consider Jerusalem the eternal and indivisible capital of Israel," she wrote in a letter to the president of Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, echoing the exact language favored by some Israeli politicians.
"Israel's new friend Hillary Clinton, born-again Zionist" read the headline in her hometown paper, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. As Michael Tomasky later wrote in Hillary's Turn, his book about the 2000 campaign, "The Jerusalem question is always an issue in New York campaigns, and anyone running for dogcatcher in New York signs on to the position Hillary took."
The issue also elicited criticism from Rice, who called on Israel to stop building in contested territory even before Monday's announcement.
"Settlement activity should stop -- expansion should stop," Rice said at a news conference after meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Israel has justified the expansions in part by citing a 2004 letter Bush sent to then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in which he acknowledged "already existing major Israeli population centers" that would prevent a return to the pre-1967 boundaries.
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