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Raising the Stakes on Jerusalem

(Commentary) Jonathan S. Tobin - In the spring of last year, the Obama administration picked a fight with Israel over the routine approval of some housing starts in the Ramat Shlomo district of Jerusalem because it coincided with a visit to the country by Vice President Joe Biden. Last week the Israeli government gave final approval for the construction of the same apartment buildings in the city. While no American government has ever recognized Israeli sovereignty over any part of the ancient capital, it is equally true that never before had an American president made an issue of the building of homes in the existing Jewish neighborhoods begun in the immediate aftermath of the reunification of the city in 1967. It was Obama's personal condemnation of the creation of new apartments in these existing Jewish parts of the city that has made their future a matter of dispute and encouraged Palestinians to hold onto false hopes that one day the Jewish residents of these homes will be forcibly evicted. The decision to raise the stakes on Jerusalem has forced the Palestinian leadership to ramp up their already unrealistic demands on the issue and therefore made peace an even more remote possibility. Referring to housing starts in Jerusalem as obstacles to peace is absolutely false. Because everyone knows that neither Ramat Shlomo nor any other of the existing Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem will ever be given up, it doesn't matter how many homes are built there.
2011-08-16 00:00:00
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