Sen. Obama in the Middle East, Part III (Jerusalem)
It is complicated to be present in Jerusalem and talk both to Israelis and Palestinians about the future of the city. It requires timing and scripting to ensure that no one is angry when you leave. Sen. Obama worked hard at it.
It is complicated to be present in Jerusalem and talk both to Israelis and Palestinians about the future of the city. It requires timing and scripting to ensure that no one is angry when you leave. Sen. Obama worked hard at it.
In Ramallah, in a very big switch from Iraq where he divulged the contents of his private meeting with Prime Minister al Maliki to reporters, Sen. Obama left it to an unnamed Palestinian Authority official, reportedly in the room with the Senator and Abu Mazen, to report, “He assured us there was a misunderstanding when he said in [June] he supports the Israelis’ rights to hold on to Jerusalem. He told us he corrected this right away and that he supports a negotiated settlement that will give the Palestinians territory.” Sen. Obama retains the ability to characterize it later as he chooses.
He visited the Western Wall at 5:45 in the morning just before he left the country. He wasn’t sneaking it in, exactly – his minions brought campaign signs and hung them along the police barricades that line the outer section of the plaza (not very respectful). But it was clever. Doing it quietly and after Ramallah meant he didn’t have to explain to Abu Mazen a public, crowd-filled and happy visit to Judaism’s holiest site, possibly interpreted as approval of Israeli stewardship. And he didn’t have to worry about Israeli or American protesters. By the time the event was public, he and the media had moved on to the Victory Column in Berlin and happy German crowds. The visit to the Western Wall exists only in images, and the images can be used as the candidate chooses.
Where he was specific, he was, again, interesting. “As a practical matter, it would be very difficult to execute” a division of Jerusalem, he said. Is the practical difficulty the only reason Sen. Obama would not re-divide Jerusalem? If it was important, if there was a moral imperative, it would actually not be difficult to divide Jerusalem – ask the Jordanians. Ask the Russians how hard it was to build a wall in Berlin in 1961 – and why it was so important for President Kennedy to go there when it went up, and for President Reagan to go there to demand that it come down.
The moral imperative for Jerusalem is on the side of no division at all, and in a moment of candor, Senator Obama said so. “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.”
Then leave the city alone.
Right now, for the only time in a millennium, Muslims, Christians and Jews have access to the “extraordinary religious sites” and Israel’s “legitimate claim” is preserved. What is holy about Jerusalem is not in its sovereign ruler. For Jews, Jerusalem was holy when the Romans ruled, when the Christians ruled, when the Ottomans ruled and when the British ruled. But as a practical matter, only when Jews rule and ruled, are the Jews there by right, not by the sufferance of others. As a practical matter, only when Jews had and have sovereignty is the legitimate claim of Israel to Old Jerusalem, which Sen. Obama recognized, defended.