Dennis Ross, who is currently Barack Obama’s senior advisor on Middle East issues and is visiting Jewish communities urging them to vote for Obama, had an interview with the Jerusalem Post that was published yesterday (h/t: Ed Lasky).
Asked to explain Obama’s statement at the June AIPAC conference that
Jerusalem “must remain undivided” in light of his subsequent statements contemplating shared sovereignty with the Palestinians, Ross responded as follows:
The fact of the matter is,
Jerusalem is
Israel‘s capital. That’s a fact. It’s also a fact that the city should not be divided again. That’s also a fact. The position of the
United States since Camp David, the position, by the way, adopted in the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, signed by Menachem Begin, was that the final status of
Jerusalem would be resolved by negotiations. Those are the three points. That’s what [Obama’s] position is. [Emphasis added].
No, it’s not. And Dennis Ross knows it. It is not even Dennis Ross’s position.
In his July 12, 2008 interview with Obama, Fareed Zakaria noted Obama’s statement to AIPAC that
Jerusalem must remain undivided and asked him “why not support the
Clinton plan, which envisions a divided
Jerusalem, the Arab half being the capital of a Palestinian state, the Jewish half being the capital of the Jewish state?” [Emphasis added].
Obama told Zakaria that his AIPAC speech had some “poor phrasing” and he assured him that he believes the
Clinton plan “provides a starting point for discussions between the parties.”
The
Clinton plan, as published word-for-word by Dennis Ross himself in the Appendix to his book “The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace,” was that “what is Arab in [
Jerusalem] should be Palestinian and what is Jewish should be Israeli” — about as succinct a definition of a “divided”
Jerusalem as one can articulate.
What does it mean for the principle of a divided
Jerusalem to be the “starting point” for discussions? Ross provides the answer to that in his 2007 book “Statecraft – And How to Restore America’s Standing in the World,” which devotes a chapter to “The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”
In that chapter, Ross takes the position that what is necessary is a “dramatic indicator that
America is now ready to resolve the conflict once and for all.” He suggests that the Bush administration “or its successor” should “offer its own central principles for settling the conflict.” These principles would “leave room for negotiations,” but only within the parameters of the principles themselves.
Here is the principle Ross sets forth for
Jerusalem (page 283 of Statecraft):
* balance the respective interests in Jerusalem by declaring that what is Arab in East Jerusalem will be Palestinian, and what is Jewish will be Israeli, including in the Old City
In other words, Ross endorses the division of
Jerusalem – and wants it officially endorsed by the
United States as a “dramatic indicator” of its readiness to “resolve the conflict,” with “negotiations” to follow.
One can argue that the division of
Jerusalem is necessary for a “peace agreement.” One can argue that the agreement would produce not peace but a new war. But what one cannot argue – not with any intellectual honesty – is that Obama did not reverse his position on an undivided Jerusalem, or that his senior Middle East advisor does not explicitly favor a divided
Jerusalem — and wants the “successor administration” to announce it as its guiding principle.
