Israel’s Capital ‘Disappears’ from Democratic Platform

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yerushalayimThe Democratic Party platform doesn’t state that Yerushalayim is the capital of Israel, a change from prior years that could provide fuel to critics who say President Barack Obama’s commitment to Israel is weak.

“President Obama and the Democratic Party maintain an unshakable commitment to Israel’s security,” begins the 70-page platform in a section titled “The Middle East.” The three-paragraph section details the Obama administration’s support for Israel-including boosting security assistance-but says nothing about Jerusalem.
“It is unfortunate that the entire Democratic Party has embraced President Obama’s shameful refusal to acknowledge that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital,” Mr. Romney said in a statement. He added, “Four years of President Obama’s repeated attempts to create distance between the United States and our cherished ally have led the Democratic Party to remove from their platform an unequivocal acknowledgment of a simple reality. As president, I will restore our relationship with Israel and stand shoulder to shoulder with our close ally.”Such an omission provide an opening to Mr. Obama’s rival for the presidency, Mitt Romney, as Jewish voters-particularly in the battleground state of Florida-are key to the election.

A spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, Melanie Roussell, said the Obama administration’s policy toward Jerusalem mirrors that of previous administrations. “As the White House said several months ago, the status of Jerusalem is an issue that should be resolved in final status negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians – which we also said in the 2008 platform. We will continue to work with the parties to resolve this issue as part of a two state solution that secures the future of Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland of the Jewish people.”

Traditionally both the Republicans and Democrats have called during election-year campaigns for Jerusalem to be the capital of the Jewish state. Mr. Obama stated this in a 2008 campaign speech in front of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Washington most powerful pro-Israel lobby. But once in office, presidents from both parties have made little effort to implement such a policy, in part, because such steps would undercut efforts to forge a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

For years, both parties’ official platforms have mentioned that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel as part of an effort to show unflagging support to the country (and to garner support with Jewish voters). In 2008, the Democratic Party’s platform said “Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel. The parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations. It should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths.”

The Republican Party’s platform for 2012 says “We support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state with secure, defensible borders; and we envision two democratic states-Israel with Jerusalem as its capital and Palestine-living in peace and security.”

The GOP’s platform also omits details about Israel that it had in its 2008 platform. In 2008, the GOP said “We support Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel and moving the American embassy to that undivided capital of Israel.”

This year’s platform makes no mention of moving the embassy. Mr. Romney in July said the U.S. embassy should be moved to Jerusalem and that he’d consult with the Israel about how to do it. Moving the embassy could inflame tensions in the region because Palestinians believe it should be their capital.

Mr. Obama has had a shaky relationship with Israel and its leaders. In 2011, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a rare public rebuke of Mr. Obama at the White House over the president’s comments that peace negotiations should resume based on Israel’s borders before it gained new territory in the 1967 Six Day War.

Mr. Netanyahu, speaking before reports with the president in the Oval Office, turned to face the president while telling him Israel “cannot go back to the 1967 lines” that are “indefensible.”

Read more: WASHINGTON WIRE

{Matzav.com Newscenter}


7 COMMENTS

  1. Now he definitely has my vote. I don’t like being pandered too, Gop knows they aren’t moving the embassy, they just hope we are too dumb to realize

  2. don’t you remember him saying he would like to see the US as a “muslem country” don’t you people see what’s waiting if c”v he gets another term “hashem yirachem”

  3. If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, hatches baby ducks, it must be a duck.

    Let’s call things by their name! If our ‘esteemed’ Prez found the time to visit Egypt, forgive $1 billion of Egypt’s debt, acts with calculated, deliberate rudeness towards Israel’s elected prime minister, does not recognize Yerushalaim as the capital city of the Jews, if he believes that Israel defending itself against Iran is a criminal act (his military chief said he doesn’t want to be “complicit” in an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites), then we, American Jews have no choice but to conclude that Barack Obama is a sonnei Israel. May Jews smell the coffee and vote accordingly! May Hashem humilate and crush Obama as he richly deserves it!

  4. Why would we want the 2 parties to keep lying to us?
    No U.S. government Administration ever recognized E.Jerusalem’s annexation.
    Year after year the parties word their platforms with a lie to all Jews that the U.S. government recognizes East Jerusalem as part of Israel. Yet the U.S. Government never changes it’s policies of not recognizing any part of East Jerusalem’s annexation.

    President GW Bush even bragged in his autobiographical memoirs “DECISION POINTS” the following:
    BUSH QUOTE: “With my approval, Condi oversaw a separate channel of talks directly between Olmert and Abbas. The dialogue culminated in a secret proposal from Olmert to Abbas. His offer would have returned the vast majority of the territory in the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinians, accepted the construction of a tunnel connecting the two Palestinian territories, allowed a limited number of Palestinian refugees return to Israel, established Jerusalem as a joint capital of both Israel and Palestine, and entrusted control of the holy cites to a panel of nonpolitical elders.”

    Olmert in press reports reported the same.

    Bill Clinton said:
    JPOST QUOTE: Former president Bill Clinton, for his part, has twice indicated in recent days that Abbas was ready to accept the kinds of terms discussed with Ehud Barak in 2000 and offered by Olmert in 2008. In The New York Times last week,
    Clinton wrote that: “Because of the terms accepted in late 2000 by Prime Minister Ehud Barak, supported in greater detail by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and approved by President Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinians, everyone knows what a final agreement would look like.”
    ( this included division of Jerusalem)
    And in a subsequent talk to mark the anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the former president elaborated that Abbas had “made it clear” that Clinton’s own peace proposals, accepted by Barak in 2000, were “more or less what he’d be prepared to accept.”
    site is here: http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=195039

    Last year the Dem platform spoke out of both sides of their mouths: “Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel. The parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations. It should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths.” That position is a lie unless the umbrella meaning is “joint”.
    The only way out of the contradiction is to claim that the united Jerusalem means what Obama said in 2008 after his statement it will remain without a physical division because the parties will decide on the status, and as we know from GW Bush, part will be internationalized and part will be the joint capital.

    Bush didnt let up the entire time he was in office even before the 2008 offer:
    GW Bush on MAY 26, 2005 with Abbas at the White House: QUOTE “Israel should not undertake any activity that contravenes road map obligations or prejudice final status negotiations with regard to Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem. Therefore, Israel must remove unauthorized outposts and stop settlement expansion”.

    This means GW Bush didnt consider Jerusalem part of Israel but needed to wait for the parties to work it out.

    John R. Bolton, U.S. Ambassador to the UN — February, 2006, while Bolton was serving as president of the Security Council and just weeks after Hamas won Palestinian elections:
    QUOTE: “Israel must continue to work with Palestinian leaders to help improve the daily lives of Palestinians. At the same time, Israel should not undertake any activity that contravenes its road map obligations, or prejudices the final status negotiations with regard to Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem. This means that Israel must remove unauthorized posts and stop settlement expansion.”

    President George W. Bush speaking with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas – October 20, 2005
    QUOTE BUSH: “Israel should not undertake any activity that contravenes road map obligations or prejudice final status negotiations with regard to Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem. Therefore, Israel must remove unauthorized outposts and stop settlement expansion.”

    JAN 2008 BUSH
    QUOTE BUSH: “I know Jerusalem is a tough issue. Both sides have deeply felt political and religious concerns. I fully understand that finding a solution to this issue will be one of the most difficult challenges on the road to peace, but that is the road we have chosen to walk…..
    ….The establishment of the state of Palestine is long overdue. The Palestinian people deserve it…..The peace agreement should happen, and can happen, by the end of this year.

    QUOTE: Bush: “I share with these two leaders the vision of two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security….The point of departure for permanent status negotiations to realize this vision seems clear: There should be an end to the occupation that began in 1967. The agreement must establish Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people, just as Israel is a homeland for the Jewish people. These negotiations must ensure that Israel has secure, recognized, and defensible borders. And they must ensure that the state of Palestine is viable, contiguous, sovereign, and independent…..While territory is an issue for both parties to decide, I believe that any peace agreement between them will require mutually agreed adjustments to the armistice lines of 1949 to reflect current realities and to ensure that the Palestinian state is viable and contiguous. I believe we need to look to the establishment of a Palestinian state and new international mechanisms, including compensation, to resolve the refugee issue….I reaffirm to each leader that implementation of any agreement is subject to implementation of the road map. Neither party should undertake any activity that contravenes road map obligations or prejudices the final status negotiations. On the Israeli side that includes ending settlement expansion and removing unauthorized outposts. On the Palestinian side that includes confronting terrorists and dismantling terrorist infrastructure.
    I know Jerusalem is a tough issue. Both sides have deeply felt political and religious concerns. I fully understand that finding a solution to this issue will be one of the most difficult challenges on the road to peace, but that is the road we have chosen to walk…..
    ….The establishment of the state of Palestine is long overdue. The Palestinian people deserve it…..The peace agreement should happen, and can happen, by the end of this year.”
    President Bush January 10, 2008: at the King David Hotel Jerusalem
    http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/01/20080110-3.html

    January 8, 2008 / US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The Jerusalem Post that “Har Homa is a settlement the United States has opposed from the very beginning.” Rice, who was accompanying Bush en route to Israel said that “the United States doesn’t make a distinction” between settlement activity in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and that Israel’s George Bush Road Map obligations, which include a building freeze, relate to “settlement activity generally.” Here we have the Bush Administration imposing -even 6 years after the Road Map was initiated – the road Map. And none of the concerns that Israel formally delineated were addressed by Bush.
    http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=88107
    http://www.jpost.com/Israel//Article.aspx?id=88107

    Israel should not undertake any activity that contravenes road map obligations or prejudice final status negotiations with regard to Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem. Therefore, Israel must remove unauthorized outposts and stop settlement expansion.”
    President George W. Bush speaking with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas – May 26, 2005
    “Now, our position on settlement activity has not changed. We have said to the Israelis that they have obligations under the roadmap, they have obligations not to increase settlement activity.”
    Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Interview with LA Times – March 24, 2005
    “I would say that we continue — our policy continues to be that Israel should freeze settlement construction.”

    March 24, 2005
    “Now, our position on settlement activity has not changed. We have said to the Israelis that they have obligations under the roadmap, they have obligations not to increase settlement activity. We expect, in particular, that they are going to be careful about anything — route of the fence, settlement activity, laws — that would appear to prejudge a final status agreement, and it’s concerning that this is where it is and around Jerusalem…. But we’ve noted our concern to the Israelis — and David Welch (Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs) and Elliott [Abrams] (NSC Advisor) did….
    Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Interview with LA Times, March 24, 2005
    http://www.cmep.org/documents/BushAdmin_Jerusalem.htm, September 11, 2006

    “Achieving an agreement will require painful political concessions by both sides. While territory is an issue for both parties to decide, I believe that any peace agreement between them will require mutually agreed adjustments to the armistice lines of 1949 to reflect current realities and to ensure that the Palestinian state is viable and contiguous.” President Bush January 10, 2008: at the King David Hotel Jerusalem
    http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/01/20080110-3.html
    _____________________________________________
    The U.S. government wont even move the embassy to WEST Jerusalem- the U.S. wont even move the embassy next to the Knesset in West Jerusalem. The U.S. Government will not even refer in official correspondence with ANY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD TO JERSUALEM BEING ISRAEL.

    No Republican president has ever even hinted at the idea that he, the president, or the government of the U.S. recognizes annexed East Jersualem as Israel.

    (Furthermore No Republican President nor any Republican platform indicates on the paper or in a footnote or in an addendum or anywhere else on paper or otherwise that East Jersualem that was annexed after the 67 war is what they mean in the platform by the word Jersusalem– but even if it did, once again, it is a LIE becasue the government policy and all diplomatic actions are run that East Jerusalem is not Israel.)

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