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"Obama Tells Hard Line Zionists What They Want To Hear"
One line in Barack Obama's homage to Israel at this week's AIPAC convention has dominated the post-speech coverage:
"Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel - and it must remain undivided," Obama told the cheering crowd.
Hard-line and moderate Palestinian leaders found something they could agree on in denouncing Obama's stand as, well, divisive.
When pressed on the issue after the speech, Obama said the fate of Jerusalem would really have to be up to the Israelis and Palestinians to decide, a statement that was presented by some as Obama backtracking.
Facing criticism from Palestinians, Sen. Barack Obama acknowledged yesterday that the status of Jerusalem will need to be negotiated in future peace talks, amending a statement earlier in the week that the city "must remain undivided."
Obama's statement, made during a speech Wednesday to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group, drew a swift rebuke from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
"This statement is totally rejected," Abbas told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. "The whole world knows that holy Jerusalem was occupied in 1967, and we will not accept a Palestinian state without having Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state."
The city boundaries are, like the contentious borders that cut across the Middle East, artificial and modern creations.
After seizing East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War, Israel set about expanding the city boundaries to encompass vast stretches of the surrounding hillsides that makes the city map look like a gerrymandered congressional district.
The irony is that even Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who stood firmly against dividing Jerusalem when he was the city's mayor, has said that it may be time to think about giving up parts of the city.
Last fall, Olmert raised the possibility of abandoning claims to at least some of the outlying, predominantly-Arab neighborhoods and refugee camps that were absorbed by Israel after the Six Day War.
"Was it necessary to include the Shufat Refugee Camp, Arab Es-Sawahra, Walaja and other villages and declare: 'This, too, is Jerusalem?' " Olmert said in a speech to the Israeli parliament last fall. "Of this, I must confess, I am not convinced."
Olmert even received unlikely support for "dividing Jerusalem" from conservative cabinet member Avigdor Lieberman, a longtime advocate of swapping Arab communities in Israel for Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
"We are willing to swap," Lieberman said last fall. "And when I look at the demography, I don't think the state of Israel has to subsidize refugee camps, whether they are in Nablus or in Gaza or in Jerusalem."
Following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Jerusalem was divided into two parts - the western portion, populated primarily by Jews, came under Israeli sovereignty, while the eastern portion, populated mainly by Arabs, came under Jordanian rule. Arabs living in such western Jerusalem neighbourhoods as Katamon or Malha were forced to leave; the same fate befell Jews in the eastern areas, including the Old City and the City of David. The only eastern area of the city that remained in Israeli hands throughout the 19 years of Jordanian rule was Mt. Scopus, where the Hebrew University is located, which formed an enclave during that period and therefore is not considered part of East Jerusalem. Following the 1967 Six-Day War, the eastern part of Jerusalem came under Israeli rule and was merged with the western municipality, together with several neighbouring West Bank villages. In November 1967, the United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 was passed, calling for Israel to withdraw from territories occupied in "recent conflict". In 1980, Israeli Parliament passed the Jerusalem Law declaring all of Jerusalem an "eternal and indivisible capital of the State of Israel," which has not been recognised internationally.
Barack Obama's tendency to pander to his audience was evident in his recent speech before the powerful Jewish lobby, AIPAC. Though proclaiming himself to be the great "uniter", Palestinians were angered by his declaration of an "undivided Jerusalem" and rightly so, in my opinion. Israel taking control of all Jerusalem has never been sanctioned or approved by the international community, apparently something Obama didn't know or care about as he spoke before the Prime Minister Of Israel, Ehud Olmert. Prime Minister Olmert, incidentally doesn't favor an "undivided Jerusalem", again something Obama apparently didn't know before writing his speech. The standing ovation eliciting speech was magnificent, as are all Obama speeches. At least America will have a President that gives good speeches. Now that's "change we can believe in".
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