As Israelis vote today, polls indicate that the leading party is Kadima, founded by Ariel Sharon on a platform of unilateral disengagement with the Palestinian Arabs if they fail to prove a responsible negotiating partner. We’ve long been of the view that these decisions are best left to the Israeli voters in their wisdom, but it’s worth noting that the issues in the election have significant implications for America. The Likud Party leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, is quoted in the Jerusalem Post as saying yesterday, in a last-minute campaign stop, “Kadima and the Left will divide Jerusalem.”

If Kadima does so, it would be violating the express vows of its founder, Prime Minister Sharon. In his Jerusalem Day speech on May 19, 2004, Mr. Sharon said, “The oath of the exiles on the Rivers of Babylon, ‘If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its cunning,’ will forever be scorched in the heart of every Jew.” He vowed, “The eternal city for the eternal people for eternity!”

On September 15, 2005, in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Mr. Sharon began by saying, “I arrived here from Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish people for over 3,000 years and the undivided and eternal capital of the State of Israel.” The premier went on to say that at Israel’s heart “is united Jerusalem, the city of the Temple upon Mount Moriah, the axis of the life of the Jewish people throughout all generations, and the seat of its yearnings and prayers for 3,000 years. The city to which we pledged an eternal vow of faithfulness, which forever beats in every Jewish heart: ‘If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its cunning!'”

This is an issue on which Americans agree. The Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 includes a “statement of the Policy of the United States” that “Jerusalem should remain an undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected” and that “Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel.”

Mr. Sharon, Kadima’s founder, certainly understood all this, which is why he made it a point to stress in his public appearances the line from Psalm 137. Our sense is that the Kadima leader, Ehud Olmert, a former mayor of Jerusalem, also grasps the issue. If he and his party gain in this election a mandate to seek a governing coalition, he will have plenty of challenges finding the right way to protect Mr. Netanyahu’s free-market reforms at the Ministry of Finance while remaining true to Mr. Sharon’s stated principles and proving Mr. Netanyahu wrong on the issue at the heart of the Jewish state.