By ANDY SOLTIS, Post Wire Services
June 5, 2008
Barack Obama, wearing a pin bearing the Israeli and American flags, kicked off his general election campaign yesterday with an impassioned appeal for Jewish votes that promised Jerusalem must remain the undivided capital of Israel.
PHOTO GALLERY: Hillary Clinton And Barack Obama
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His declaration - which immediately outraged the Palestinians - goes beyond longstanding neutral American policy, which holds that the future of Jerusalem must be agreed upon in negotiations.
Obama, in a major address the day after he clinched the Democratic nomination, told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, "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," he added.
"Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."
Mahmoud Abbas, the US-backed Palestinian president who is currently trying to negotiate the future of Jerusalem, expressed outrage at Obama's stance.
"This statement is totally rejected," he said.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told al-Jazeera that Obama "was giving ammunition to extremists across the region."
The United States has long called for the creation of a Palestinian state, whose capital would be determined in negotiations with Israel.
The Palestinian Authority has claimed all of Jerusalem. But in negotiations it demanded instead that east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, be returned to them so it can be their capital.
The Israelis tentatively accepted that divided capitals idea as far back as the Camp David negotiations led by President Bill Clinton in 2000, and repeated their willingness when peace talks revived last year, according to diplomatic reports.
Obama took pains yesterday to reassure his audience, a powerful lobbying group known as AIPAC, that he wouldn't pressure Israel into dangerous concessions.
"Let me be clear. Israel's security is sacrosanct. It is nonnegotiable," the Illinois senator said.
Obama, who has been criticized for sometimes not wearing an American-flag pin, wore a pin of both Old Glory and the Star of David on his lapel. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who also addressed the Washington convention, did not.
The future of Jerusalem as Israel's capital has always been a "motherhood" issue for US presidential candidates seeking Jewish votes.
When Bill Clinton ran for president in 1992, he promised to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
But he repeatedly rejected the move after he was elected. When Clinton spoke, as president, to AIPAC in 1995, he avoided mention of Jerusalem's future.
Obama is considered vulnerable to Republican inroads among traditionally Democratic Jewish voters, who could make the difference in battleground states like Florida.
Yesterday, he sounded as militant as Israeli hard-liners on issues besides Jerusalem, such as promising $30 billion in military aid to the Jewish state.
"I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon - everything," he said to a standing ovation from the crowd of 7,000.
Meanwhile, al Qaeda's second-in-command urged Palestinians to increase suicide and rocket attacks on Israel in order to end its blockade of the Gaza Strip.
"Step up your martyrdom-seeking operations, and increase your missiles and ambushes, as there is no solution but this," Ayman al-Zawahri said in an Internet recording.
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