THE JERUSALEM QUESTION. As Tapped's resident Clintonologist, I'll just add to Ezra's item from yesterday that yes, Clinton's stated position on Jerusalem is to the right of longstanding U.S. policy and no, it's not new. She took the same position in her 2000 Senate contest. This New York Times piece from the summer of 1999 gets into some of the backstory leading up to Clinton's declaration that year that Jerusalem is the "eternal and indivisible capital of Israel'' -- a statement then disavowed by her husband's own State Department.
The single most important thing to remember about Clinton's foreign policy thinking is that she is the Senator from New York. She represents more Jews than any other politician in America except Chuck Schumer, as well as the second-largest Jewish population center in the world, and the meshuga politics (and really, that's one link that's worth clicking through) of New York turn the status of Jerusalem into a routine political hot potato there. Schumer has gone even further than Clinton; he sponsored the "Jerusalem Embassy Act," which would move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel's "undivided" capital of Jerusalem. Heck -- it was only the public pleas of then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barack that got Schumer to back off a 1999 effort to withhold $100 million from the State Department if President Clinton did not declare that "the United States now formally recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and that it is United States policy that Jerusalem should remain undivided." And, nota bene, Schumer had the votes to do so at the time. The two sitting Democratic New York Senators' position on the indivisibility of Jerusalem was shared by Republicans Rudy Giuliani and Clinton predecessor Alfonse D'Amato, as well. "We are all united and Jerusalem will be and should remain the capital of the state of Israel undivided forever," said Giuliani in a 1996 speech. See also this D'Amato dig at Mark Green in 1986 for an earlier example of the politics of Jerusalem in New York.
Just as Alabama politics encourages and rewards politicians for being pro-life, New York politics encourages and rewards politicians for being pro-Israel. One of these days someone -- paging Mike Tomasky? -- is going to write a very smart article about the regional tics the New Yorkers in contest 2008 bring with them to the national stage, and the extent to which Giuliani and Clinton were shaped by similar forces.
I should also note that there is a uniform opinion among the people I know who follow or are part of Middle East policy making in Washington (both Arab and Jew) that Clinton does not really believe her stated position on Jerusalem, which would seem to preclude a peace process. Rudy Giuliani is a different matter, and the very pro-Israel New York Sun's Eli Lake details here why he thinks Giuliani is not sincerely committed to the idea of a two-state solution, let alone open to a peace process that would include discussion of the status of Jerusalem. As Giuliani wrote in Foreign Affairs, "Too much emphasis has been placed on brokering negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians....It is not in the interest of the United States, at a time when it is being threatened by Islamist terrorists, to assist the creation of another state that will support terrorism." That's a pretty stunning divergence from current U.S. policy, which, at least in theory, supports continuing efforts toward the creation of an eventual Palestinian state.
--Garance Franke-Ruta
