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Battle of Jerusalem: What Congress Should Do Now

(New York Post) Seth Lipsky - Let the massacre of the rabbis in Israel serve as a wake-up call to the new Congress in January. Menachem Begin used to say that the status of Jerusalem can't be decided in the U.S. Congress. It has to be determined, and can only be won, by Israel. But, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan told me in the 1990s, that doesn't mean there's nothing Congress can do to help. Congress sought to force President Bill Clinton to move America's Israel embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv in 1995. At the last moment, Congress added into the law a waiver allowing the president to delay the move by six months at a time. The U.S. embassy is still in Tel Aviv. In 2002, Congress passed a law requiring the State Department to issue to an American child born in Jerusalem a passport saying he was born in Israel. The State Department - under both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama - refused and the issue is before the Supreme Court. This is a fight Congress can take repeatedly to the State Department and to the UN, and to any other multilateral institutions that have anything to do with the Middle East. Congress can encourage Israel's expansion of housing in areas that will remain part of the Jewish state in any conceivable peace deal. Congress can pressure Jordan, which has control of the Temple Mount, and seek to force an end to the pact under which Jews walking near their holiest site are banned from praying, even by moving their lips in silent prayer. Congress can halt funding for America's separate consular mission in the eastern part of Jerusalem. That mission, a hotbed of anti-Israel activity, perpetuates Palestinian Arab hopes to repartition the city. Much can be done for the cause of peace as well as justice through a strong stand by Congress.
2014-11-21 00:00:00
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