http://verify.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/late/0708mideast-hillary.html
July 8, 1999
Hillary Clinton Backs Israel on Jerusalem
By REUTERS
[W] ASHINGTON -- First lady Hillary Rodham
Clinton, breaking with U.S. official
policy, told an Orthodox Jewish organization
based in New York that she considers
Jerusalem "the eternal and indivisible
capital of Israel."
She also promised that, if New Yorkers
elected her to the U.S. Senate, she would
support a strong Israel and favor moving the
U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, she
said.
She took the unorthodox policy positions in a
letter to the Orthodox Union dated July 2 and
obtained by Reuters on Thursday. The Orthodox
Union represents about 750 orthodox Jewish
synagogues across the United States.
U.S. policy is that Israel and the
Palestinians should decide the fate of
Jerusalem in talks on "final status" issues,
together with borders, refugees and Jewish
settlements.
U.S. leaders have said they do not want to
see the city again divided, as it was between
1948 and 1967, but they have never publicly
accepted the Israeli view that it is the
"eternal and indivisible" capital of the
Jewish state.
Palestinians see the old eastern and mainly
Arab part of the city, captured by Israel in
the 1967 war, as the capital of a future
independent Palestinian state.
A U.S. official described Hillary Clinton's
letter as "untimely," coming just as a new
Israeli government has raised hopes of
progress in Middle East talks.
The first lady, who is exploring the
possibility of running for the Senate in New
York next year, made the promises in response
to a letter on June 8 from Mandell Ganchrow,
the president of the Orthodox Union.
Ganchrow asked if she considered Jerusalem to
be the indivisible eternal capital of Israel
and if she would vote to deprive the U.S.
president of his authority to delay the
process of moving the U.S. Embassy to
Jerusalem.
The retiring senator whose seat she would
contest, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been
strongly pro-Israeli. He was one of the
sponsors of the 1995 legislation which called
on the administration to move the embassy by
May 31 this year.
"I personally consider Jerusalem the eternal
and indivisible capital of Israel, and I
admire the leadership shown by Sen. Moynihan
on this issue," Clinton answered.
"If I am chosen by New Yorkers to be their
senator, ... you can be sure that I will be
an active, committed advocate for a strong
and secure Israel able to live in peace with
its neighbors, with the United States Embassy
located in its capital, Jerusalem," she
added.
Hillary Clinton added one condition for the
embassy move. "The timing ... must be
sensitive to Israel's interest in achieving a
secure peace with its neighbors," she wrote.
The letter did not take a position on whether
the president should have the right to delay
a move.
Her husband, President Bill Clinton, used his
waiver power in June, saying the embassy must
stay in Tel Aviv for the moment "to protect
our critical national security interests,
most crucially in preserving the prospects
for a comprehensive, just and lasting peace."
An embassy move at this stage would infuriate
Palestinians and other Arabs, who refuse to
recognize Israel's unilateral annexation of
East Jerusalem and continue to consider it
occupied territory subject to the Geneva
conventions.
Hillary Clinton's previous intervention in
Middle East politics was also controversial,
in the opposite direction.
In May 1998 she said a Palestinian state
should emerge from Palestinian self-rule in
Gaza and the West Bank. The White House said
her remark reflected her personal opinion and
did not mark a change in U.S. policy.
The Orthodox Union said it was releasing her
letter because "it is crucial that the Jewish
community of New York be informed of her
opinions concerning Israel and Jerusalem."
Her possible Republican rival for the Senate
seat, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani,
has won over many formerly Democratic Jews
with strongly pro-Israeli positions.
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
