Arab Anger Forces Obama To Flip-Flop on Jerusalem
(IsraelNN.com) Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama qualified his support for a united Jerusalem Thursday after Arabs voice intense anger at this policy. He had told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) this week, "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."
Within 24 hours, he backtracked and declared. "Well, obviously, it's going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations…. As a practical matter, it would be very difficult to execute" a policy of the capital remaining undivided. He pointed out that a system has to be worked out in which "everyone has access to the extraordinary religious sites in Old Jerusalem but that Israel has a legitimate claim on that city."
Israel has given Christians and Muslims free and complete control of and access to holy sites in Jerusalem since it was restored to Israel in the Six-Day War in 1967. Jordan, which occupied it and all of Judea and Samaria since 1948, prohibited Christians and Jews from holy sites.