Didn’t Rashid Khalidi teach you anything? Don’t you serve on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee? Haven’t you ever gotten a briefing from the State Department or read a newspaper in the last twenty years?
In Washington on Wednesday, Obama told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israel lobby group, that if elected president in November, he would work for peace with a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Fair enough but then he added this:
“Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided,” Obama told the AIPAC lobby group.
The United States does not regard Jerusalem as Israel’s capital — the U.S. and other world embassies are in Tel Aviv — nor does the United States recognize Israel’s annexation of Arab East Jerusalem following its capture in the 1967 Six Day War. Obama just in a whiff of a statement changed a long-standing US foreign policy position had he been President. Thankfully, he is not.
So guess what? Palestinian leaders and other Arab leaders reacted with anger and dismay on Wednesday to Obama saying Jerusalem should be Israel’s undivided capital. An editorial appearing in the London-based Arabic language newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi’s stated:
“This cheap way of throwing himself at the feet of this lobby harms American interests … and encourages violence and terrorism by giving justification to extremist groups, such as al-Qaida,”
Obama’s comments have set off a firestorm of criticism. That’s what foreign policy under an Obama Administration is going to be like. Gaffe followed by a firestorm of criticism. Now he has to backtrack, which he did.
“Well, obviously, it’s going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations,” Obama told CNN when asked whether Palestinians had no future claim to the city.
Asked if he opposed any division of Jerusalem, Obama said: “As a practical matter, it would be very difficult to execute. And I think that it is smart for us to — to work through a system in which everybody has access to the extraordinary religious sites in Old Jerusalem but that Israel has a legitimate claim on that city.”
Well, obviously, Barack, your inexperience is showing. And in the realm of foreign policy, where words matter, you can’t be pandering which was what you were doing because those words actually can carry significant risks and pose deadly consequences for the United States and its allies. You just might set off a riot. And you can’t backtrack from a riot.
More from the Washington Post including a rather incredulous comment by Representative Robert Wexler (D-FL) who on behalf of the Obama campaign actually said that Obama’s comment to CNN should not be seen as backtracking or even an amendment. He must think we are all damn fools.