The Price of Jerusalem?

President Biden’s price for a deal with Saudi Arabia is coming into view ahead of his as yet unannounced Mideast trip. The price is Jerusalem, which Mr. Biden would take the first steps toward dividing by opening in Israel’s capital what our Benny Avni reports would be a “de facto consulate” to the Palestinian Arabs. It would be a start toward unraveling America’s recognition of Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel. It deserves to be rapidly rejected.It strains the ability of language to capture this perfidy. One can start, though, with the Congress, where, in 1995, Mr. Biden, then a senator from Delaware, was one of the original sponsors of the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, designed to, among other purposes, “provide for the relocation of the United States Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.” It passed the House by a vote of 374 to 37 and the Senate by 93 to five.The law enacted as the “policy of the United States” that Jerusalem should be an undivided city in which all ethnic and religious groups are protected, “recognized as the capital” of Israel, and the city where America’s Israel embassy should be established by May 1999. President Clinton refused to sign the bill. It went into law without his signature — beginning the Democrats’ breach of the faith that Truman placed in the Jewish state.The Democrats had inserted a waiver that enabled the president to delay the moving of the embassy every six months. Presidents Clinton, Bush ’43, and Obama proceeded to make a mockery of the law. They executed a waiver every six months until America finally found a president who, in Donald Trump, was prepared to — and did — carry out the law. He moved the embassy without incident, and it took over handling both Jewish and Palestinian matters.Until then, the received wisdom of the State Department was that Jerusalem should have been reserved for “final status” negotiations. To act sooner, the diplomats and progressive newspapers warned, would beget violence. The Sun and several others argued repeatedly that the opposite was more likely — that delaying the move provided an incentive to delay peace. Only by moving the embassy and recognizing Israel’s claim to Jerusalem could peace emerge.In the event, that’s exactly what happened. President Trump took Jerusalem off the table, moved the embassy, and peace began to break out. It’s been moving along smartly, too, with those Arab countries that have stepped up and Israel working on billions of dollars in the kind of commerce that creates common interests. Things have developed to the point where it is logical for relations to be established even with Saudi Arabia.At this juncture enters President Biden. He’s curtailed oil drilling at home and is suddenly desperate. So he has decided to tempt the Saudis by offering the Arabs half of Jerusalem. There is no hard evidence of a link between Mr. Biden’s gesture toward the Palestinians and his pending trip to Riyadh. Unlike the aging Saudi monarch, King Salman, the de facto Saudi ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, is more worried about Iran than the Palestinian Arabs.Yet it is entirely likely that Mr. Biden’s advisers make such a link. He’s not the first American to woo the Saudis that way, after all. No less a figure than Thomas Friedman of the New York Times some years ago tried to retail a plan that King Abdullah, Salman’s half brother and then the Saudi monarch, was proffering, which would also have split half of Jerusalem from the Jewish state. And would have done so in the middle of an intifada.Israel would have none of it, and it’s hard to imagine that it is going to give up Jerusalem now. Any such move would hand a victory to those foes of Israel who permitted the United Nations Security Council to pass Resolution 2234, which seeks to outlaw Israeli claims to settlements, including in parts of the capital. Far better for America to stand with Israel, which has waited for millenia for its victories. Why should any American administration sell it out now?The truth is that no one can decide the Jerusalem question other than Israel herself. That point was often marked by Menachem Begin. One day in 1982, the premier visited the Senate, only to be shouted at by a senator who banged a desk and threatened to cut off aid. Mr. Begin famously kept his dignity, responding that no amount of aid entitled America to tell Israel what it must do. The senator was Mr. Biden, who 40 years later still doesn’t understand.

The Price of Jerusalem?

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