BLESSED BE THE PEACEMAKERS, FOR THEY SHALL MOVE THE U.S. EMBASSY TO JERUSALEM

(Washington, D.C.): The United States Senate is expected
shortly to consider legislation directing President Clinton to
relocate the American Embassy in Israel to the capital city of
Jerusalem. S.1322, the Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act of 1995,
is sponsored by Majority Leader Robert Dole, Sens. Daniel
Patrick Moynihan and Daniel Inouye and over 60 other
Senators. The Center for Security Policy is proud of the seminal
contribution to this legislation made by one distinguished member
of its Board of Advisors — the Senate’s rising star on defense,
intelligence and foreign policy matters, Sen. Jon Kyl
(R-AZ) — in close collaboration with another, one of the
Nation’s preeminent Middle East experts and a former Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Defense, Douglas J. Feith.

As the attached op.ed. by Mr. Feith
published this past May in the New York Times makes clear,
moving the only U.S. embassy in the world that is currently not
located in the host nation’s capital to Jerusalem will be more
than a symbolic endorsement of Israeli sovereignty there. It will
be a tangible demonstration of the reality that the Arabs cannot
hope to drive a wedge between the United States and its
strategic, democratic ally over the status of Jerusalem. As Mr.
Feith put it:

“Inasmuch as the essence of the Arab-Israeli
conflict is legitimacy, the essence of the legitimacy issue
is Israel’s right to sovereignty in Jerusalem. If Israelis do
not have the right to sovereignty there, they can hardly
justify sovereignty anywhere.

“Jerusalem has been central to Jewish nationhood for
3,000 years. The Jews’ national movement, after all, is
Zionism, Zion being Jerusalem. The Arabs understand this,
too, which is why the importance of Jerusalem in Arab
politics, diplomacy, philosophy and literature increased as
the struggle against Zionism intensified.”

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy wholeheartedly concurs with
the view that it will improve the prospects for real
peace to adjust Arab expectations about the future status of
Jerusalem. It hopes and expects that the Senate and the House
will adopt the Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act by overwhelming,
bipartisan margins in time for Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s
visit to Capitol Hill on 25 October for a congressional
celebration of Jerusalem’s 3,000th birthday as a Jewish city.

The Center also urges the Clinton Administration to drop its
threat to veto this initiative. It should instead embrace
S.1322 because it is the correct and moral thing to do on its
merits. And if that is not grounds enough to act for an
Administration generally preoccupied with political
considerations, here are two other reasons: In this way, Mr.
Clinton can honor a campaign pledge. He can also spare himself
the ignominy and waste of political capital that will be
entailed in further resisting the congressional and Israeli
desires for the U.S. embassy to be moved to Israel’s capital.