wfn.org | Presidential candidates statements on Israel are under scrutiny

[PCUSA.NEWS@ecunet.org]

Note #6181 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

5-September-2000
00319

Presidential candidates statements on Israel are under scrutiny

Is pro-Israel stance a promise or pandering?

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE -- With the U.S. presidential campaign in full swing, both
major-party candidates are talking about the most potent foreign-policy
question in domestic politics: Israel.
	While Republican candidate George W. Bush has said more so far, Al Gore,
the Democrat, has a track record that is widely considered downright
"hawkish" on Israel.
	A spokesman for the powerful Israel lobby, the American-Israel Public
Affairs Committee (AIPAC), told the Presbyterian News Service (PNS) last
week that both major-party platforms are "overwhelmingly" pro-Israel.
	So religious leaders are wondering whether they ought to be worried about
how their Palestinian Christian partners might fare under either
administration.
	For instance, does George W. Bush mean what he says when he promises to
move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem? If he does, his critics
say, he'll be prejudging the outcome of the peace process and severely
limiting the U.S. government's ability to serve as a broker in the peace
talks by giving up its neutral status.
	Or are Bush's promises just election-year pandering to the U.S. Jewish
voting bloc, a strong Democratic constituency?
	In the other camp, will Al Gore be as unilaterally pro-Israeli as his track
record indicates?
	Though he's made no official campaign promises, Gore has assured the
Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations that, while the
status of Jerusalem needs to be decided in the peace talks, the outcome is
"hardly in doubt" -- and his desire is the same as theirs . The Conference
is assumed to favor Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem.
	Or will Gore find that administering a city that is sacred to three
religions and two peoples is tougher than it looks, as the presidents
following Ronald Reagan learned?
	The Palestinians themselves are attentive to the rhetoric, but not too
worried yet; they're accustomed to watching U.S. politicians pander for
votes, then take a different tack once in office.
	Ever since Reagan's day, for instance, U.S. presidents have had
Congressional authority to move the embassy. A clause in the resolution,
however, forbids a relocation if it would damage a peace process that is
still negotiating the status of Jerusalem. Politically, moving the embassy
would acknowledge Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel.
	President Bill Clinton has relied on the ‘holding' provision, but has
promised to revisit the issue before he leaves office.
	 Only Costa Rica and El Salvador have embassies in Jerusalem. All other
nations' diplomatic offices, including the U.S.'s, are in Tel Aviv.
	"We realize this is not new for American elections," says the Rev. Naim
Ateek, the director of the Sabeel Ecumenical Center for Liberation Theology,
a religious group that advocates a "just peace" in Palestine/Israel. "In
every campaign, the candidates from both parties try to [woo] the Jewish
vote.
	"Somehow, Israel's interests become very much a part of the campaign."
	And even though the American Committee on Jerusalem -- a coalition of major
Arab-American organizations seeking a solution to the Jerusalem problem that
accommodates the religious and political aspirations of both Palestinians
and Israelis -- is not pleased by either candidate's comments on Jerusalem
and the plan to move the embassy,  they are waiting to see whether the
promises are real or just politics as usual.
	ACJ President Rashid Khalidi told PNS: "The only good news is, fortunately,
that this kind of pandering tends to be restricted up to election day ...
(when) it ceases to be operational policy."
	The bad news, Khalidi added, is that all the political talk does influence
public opinion on complex issues that Americans tend to oversimplify.
	For instance, after Bush made his comments about Jerusalem, Khalidi fired
off a press release urging Bush not to commit himself to moving the embassy,
which Khalidi said would destroy "the last shred" of American neutrality as
a mediator in the peace process.
	Khalidi said no U.S. administration has recognized Jerusalem as Israel's
capital and that the Jerusalem property leased to the U.S. government by
Israel as a proposed embassy site is contested land that Israel "acquired
illegally" and actually belongs to Palestinians.
	 Khalidi was equally critical of Gore's slighty more veiled statements.
	The Bush campaign's web site reiterates the GOP candidate's promise to move
the embassy as soon as he takes office, but doesn't say much else about
Israel.
	Gore's site says quite a lot. It stresses his long commitment to
strengthening Israel's military and to U.S.-Israel defense cooperation, and
points out that Gore has worked to maintain and increase Israel's annual
military budget, which now stands at $2 billion.
	While the Web site says Gore will work for peace in the Middle East, as the
Clinton-Gore administration has done, it mentions Palestinians just once. It
asserts that Palestinian leaders have the responsibility of preventing
"those who would resort to violence" from disrupting the peace process.
	Gore says he understands the importance of the Western Wall and the Old
City to Jews in Israel and around the world, and goes on to say: "Jerusalem
is the capital of Israel, and should remain an undivided city, accessible to
people of all faiths."
	Interestingly enough, it isn't Gore's selection of Joe Lieberman, an
orthodox Jew, as his running mate that worries insiders about Gore. It is
Gore himself.
	  Rabbi Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun magazine, a left-wing Jewish
political journal, says Gore has become the administration's right-hand man
in dealing with right-wing Jewish groups. "He'll chime in with blind support
for whatever policies Israel is championing at the time," Lerner told the
PNS.
	On the other hand, while Bush hasn't amassed enough of a record for the
rabbi to tell his leanings, Lerner said that when the candidate's father was
president, he refused loan guarantees to Israel to assist in the
re-settlement of Soviet Jews, unless Israel agreed to stop building more
settlements in the disputed territories.  Lerner wondered if the son might
be willing to back down the hardliners.
	David Weaver of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.
said during an interview with the PNS that there are two ways U.S. campaigns
detract from the peace talks -- saying too little about both positions, or
too much about only one.
	 It is the "lack of obvious concern or consciousness" about the Palestinian
position on Jerusalem that is damaging, he said.
	"Palestinians are not just negotiating for themselves, but on behalf of the
Arab and Muslim world," said Weaver, referring to the claims on Jerusalem of
three religions. "It doesn't help for the world's superpower and the broker
of negotiations to take a clearly partisan position. "It just heightens the
fears, anxieties and resentments in the Arab world about the peace process
itself."
	Weaver is also somewhat skeptical about what politicians say during
campaigns, as opposed to what political reality dictates after they take
office.
	With an audible shrug, he says simply, "It's an election year."

_______________________________________________
pcusaNews mailing list
pcusaNews@pcusa.org

To unsubscribe, go to this web address:
http://pcusa01.pcusa.org/mailman/listinfo/pcusanews