Protesting Obama and McCain at AIPAC

There’s no question that Sen. Obama either erred or engaged in electoral pandering in his address to the AIPAC conference last week when he declared that "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided." I’m not eager to see Jerusalem redivided either, but Jerusalem is one third Palestinian Arab by population and this issue needs to be earnestly decided in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Obama later backpedaled, but the Jewish Voice for Peace has seized upon Obama’s misstep to issue an online petition, as follows:

Dear Senators Obama and McCain,
We were disturbed by your remarks at the AIPAC conference. We implore you to respect internationally recognized Palestinian claims to East Jerusalem, to hold not just Hamas but also Israel accountable for its use of weapons against civilian populations, and to support including Hamas in negotiations. We believe that both Palestinians and Israelis deserve to live in safe and secure societies. Please commit to working for justice and peace for both Israelis and Palestinians.

Although not all bad, this is definitely not our kind of petition! It isn't entirely a question of respecting "internationally recognized Palestinian claims to East Jerusalem" – a slightly inflated notion – but that this issue needs to be decided in negotiations that consider the interests and claims of both sides.

We also can't equate the explicit targeting of civilians by Hamas with the collateral deaths of civilians when the IDF targets Palestinian fighters. (This doesn’t mean that Israel’s use of force is always wise, correct or just, but it’s on a different moral plane than that of Hamas and other such groups that make war on civilians as a matter of course.)

And Hamas does not have standing under the internationally recognized agreements in place (mainly, Oslo II) to be part of the final-status negotiations, which is between the head of the Palestinian Authority (actually by virtue of his being the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization) and Israel. I have no quarrel with the last two sentences, however.