Word: jerusalem
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...When Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak dared negotiate Jerusalem at Camp David in 2000, then Likud leader Ariel Sharon walked onto the city's Islamic holy sites to symbolically declare his party's determination to keep all of the city in Israeli hands. (Sharon's action touched off a riot that marked the beginning of the Second Intifadah.) Today's Likud leader, Netanyahu, and the party's coalition partners appear as determined as Sharon was to maintain Jerusalem as "Israel's eternal and undivided capital...
...that this should come as much of a surprise. Sharing Jerusalem may be one of the basic requirements of the two-state solution as developed over the past two decades, but Netanyahu has been a late and reluctant convert to the two-state formula - and even then, on terms many of his supporters acknowledge are unlikely to be acceptable to any Palestinian leader. And he has pushed back against Washington's demand for a freeze in settlement construction. The two sides remain locked in negotiations on the issue, with an already previously postponed meeting between Netanyahu and President Obama...
...Refusing to even discuss East Jerusalem's status raises the ante, providing further reason for skepticism among Arabs that Netanyahu is serious about a two-state solution. The Obama Administration has warned Israel not to proceed with a residential project in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem, noting that the U.S. views such construction in the same light as settlement expansion. But while the Netanyahu government may be willing to dismantle some of the settlement outposts built without permission in the West Bank (they're usually rebuilt by settlers within days), the Prime Minister made clear on Sunday that...
...supported the U.S. position - Netanyahu clearly believes he can force the President to back down. And in doing so, the Israeli leader has taken a position from which he'll find it difficult to retreat. Netanyahu will get strong political support within Israel for standing up to Washington on Jerusalem (as he has done by resisting pressure for a settlement freeze), and he expects that the more symbolically powerful issue of the Holy City will win him support in the U.S. from Jewish leaders and Christian conservatives. In introducing Netanyahu via a video link at the annual conference...
...problem facing Obama is that pressing for a two-state solution has put him at odds with a reluctant Israeli government that has now chosen the emotive issue of Jerusalem as the test of how far he's willing to go. If he backs down, Obama pulls the plug on his carefully crafted outreach to the Muslim world and can expect to see his effort to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict fail before it has practically begun. But pressing ahead on Jerusalem and the wider peace agenda of which it forms part could, like pushing his health-care plan, come...