From the WSJ Opinion Archives
DISPATCH
Read His Lips
Will Bush make good on his pledge to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem?
"As soon as I take office, I will begin the process of moving the United States ambassador to the city Israel has chosen as its capital." That was the campaign promise George W. Bush made last May 22, when he spoke to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's annual conference in Washington. Conference-goers cheered.
I find myself thinking of Mr. Bush's promise as he prepares to take the oath of office. It's not that moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem is the be-all and end-all of Middle East policy. It's that the refusal to move the embassy from Tel Aviv has become a symbol of the weakness and vacillation that has prevailed at the State Department ever since President Truman, moving against the Foggy Bottom's advice, recognized the Jewish state in the first place.
It has become, moreover, a symbol of the intellectual hurdle Mr. Bush--or any American president--is going to have to overcome in order to extricate his office from the kind of loser's game President Clinton has been playing in the region. Mr. Clinton's was a game of temporizing, appeasement and moral equivalency that at the end of the day did nothing so much as give Arabs an incentive to commit violence against the Jewish state.
Mr. Bush's promise to move his ambassador to Jerusalem at the start of his administration was not made off the cuff. It came in the context of a carefully constructed effort to distinguish himself from Al Gore. The vice president liked to portray himself as an extraordinary friend of Israel. But he stood silent during the years when the Clinton-Gore administration was twisting Israel's arm in an effort to wrest from its government concessions far beyond its democratic mandate.
Mr. Gore's silence continued even after Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, which recognizes an undivided Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and declares that the U.S. Embassy should be in that city. President Clinton's defiance of the law--by refusing to move the embassy and by seeking the division of Jerusalem--brought a long-simmering issue to the forefront of the debate on Middle East policy.
Mr. Klein approached Mr. Bush during a private segment of the Newark fund-raiser, according to a report by my former colleague, Seth Gitell, in the Jewish Forward newspaper. Mr. Klein was quoted as saying to Mr. Bush: "The Clinton administration has refused to move the embassy to a part of Jerusalem that is pre-1967 Israel. The Clinton administration has refused to honor pre-existing U.S. law and move the embassy to Jerusalem. Will you as president follow U.S. law and move the American Embassy to Jersualem immediately?"
Mr. Bush committed a gaffe. "I'm afraid that might screw up the peace process," he said. "I don't want to screw up the peace process."
Mr. Gitell quotes Mr. Klein as asking Mr. Bush how it would screw up the peace process to move the embassy to a part of Jerusalem not under dispute. "Why are you allowing threats of terrorism to dictate policy?" Mr. Gitell quoted Mr. Klein as saying.
"Mort, we're going to have to talk some more about it," Mr. Bush said.
Within days of Mr. Gitell's dispatch in the Forward, one of Mr. Bush's spokesmen, Mindy Tucker, was on the phone to Mr. Gitell to clarify the governor's position. "If he is elected president," Ms. Tucker said, "he intends to move the embassy to Jerusalem. He will set the process in motion as soon as he becomes president."
Ms. Tucker also sought to distance Mr. Bush from remarks he had made to New York Times columnist William Safire. Back in April 1999, Mr. Safire had quoted Mr. Bush as saying: "Peace has to be negotiated between the parties involved. And I'm confident that they are going to be able to resolve Jerusalem in a way with which the Israelis are comfortable." Three months later, Ms. Tucker suggested to Mr. Gitell that the governor's remarks to Mr. Safire had not adequately reflected his position.
The question of moving the embassy to Jerusalem was especially hot in the summer of 1999, because Mr. Clinton was in the process of defying a legal deadline that required him to move the embassy by May 31 of that year. In New York, future senator Hillary Clinton was desperately trying to distance herself from her husband's record on Jerusalem.
A bipartisan group of senators was searching for a legislative way to force the president's hand. In the event, Mr. Clinton outmaneuvered the senators, some of whom were afraid to embarrass a Democratic president (and his vice president) at the beginning of the election campaign.
The governor went on to say that these truths "were self-evident to America's Founding Fathers. They learned them not only from the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment, but also from the example of Moses. The Ten Commandments, after all, are the core principles of democracy, the charter of human dignity and equality." Mr. Bush went on to say that like all Americans of goodwill, he wanted peace for Israel and peace in the Middle East.
"I recognize the importance of the peace process and the key role that the United States can play. But my support for Israel is not conditional on the outcome of the peace process." He was interrupted by applause when he said that. Then he added, "America's special relationship with Israel precedes the peace process. And Israel's adversaries should know that in my administration, the special relationship will continue, even if they cannot bring themselves to make true peace with the Jewish State."
Then he specifically criticized the Clinton administration--and, perhaps, the administration of his own father. "In recent times, Washington has tried to make Israel conform to its own plans and timetables; but this is not the path to peace." He was applauded again. "A clear and bad example was the [Clinton] administration's attempt to take sides in the most recent Israeli election. America should not interfere in Israel's democratic process."
He vowed that America would not interfere in Israeli elections when he became president. "But something will happen when I become the president. As soon as I take office, I will begin the process of moving the United States ambassador to the city Israel has chosen as its capital."
Whether he cleared the promise with the man who would become his secretary of state, Colin Powell, is unclear. His early appointments do make one wonder if he thinks people will have forgotten his campaign pledge. But it was a campaign promise so clear and pointed that it will inevitably become a test of his credibility. The only words he left out were "read my lips."
Mr. Lipsky is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal. His column appears Wednesdays.
