Obama adviser: Divide Jerusalem

Daniel Kurtzer

JERUSALEM – Jerusalem must be included in any negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, stressed Sen. Barack Obama's Middle East adviser Daniel Kurtzer.

"It will be impossible to make progress on serious peace talks without putting the future of Jerusalem on the table," Kurtzer said yesterday at a conference organized by the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute or JPPPI.

Kurtzer, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, has long been recognized by Israeli leaders, including prime ministers, as biased against Israel and is notorious for urging extreme concessions from the Jewish state. He was appointed as a primary Obama adviser on the Middle East earlier this year.

During a discussion panel yesterday, Kurtzer reportedly went on to fault the Bush administration for not doing enough to pressure Israel into dividing Jerusalem. In reaction, JPPPI head Yechezkel Dror said Jerusalem must become the cultural center of the Jewish people.

Kurtzer said in response that "before we do that, we must first accept a number of facts and the political reality of Arabs who live in East Jerusalem who do not feel part of the city."

Israel recaptured eastern Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount – Judaism's holiest site – during the 1967 Six Day War. The Palestinians have claimed eastern Jerusalem as a future capital; the area has large Arab neighborhoods, a significant Jewish population and sites holy to Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Tens of thousands of Arab complexes in eastern Jerusalem were constructed illegally on land purchased by the Jewish National Fund, a Jewish nonprofit that purportedly raises donor funds for the purpose of Jewish settlement, WND previously exposed.

Obama's appointment of Kurtzer raised eyebrows among the pro-Israel Jewish community.

"We oppose the appointment of Kurtzer because of his long, documented record of hostility to and severe pressure upon Israel," said Zionist Organization of America National Chairman Morton Klein.

Kurtzer has been blasted by mainstream Jewish organizations, including the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

He has angered Israeli leaders many times for pushing Israel into what they described as extreme concessions to the Palestinians.

"With Jews like Kurtzer, it is impossible to build a healthy relationship between Israel and the United States," Benjamin Netanyahu was quoted saying in 2001 by Israel's Haaretz newspaper.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said Kurtzer "frequently pressured Israel to make one-sided concessions to the Arabs; he constantly blamed Israel for the absence of Mideast peace, and paid little or no attention to the fact that the Palestinians were carrying out terrorist attacks and openly calling for the destruction of Israel."

Morris Amitay, former executive director of the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2001: "Kurtzer … will use his Jewishness as a protective cover for his anti-Israel views."

The ZOA points out Israel's leading daily, Yediot Ahronot, editorialized on Kurtzer's negative influence against Israel:

"Possibly more than any other U.S. State Department official, Kurtzer has been instrumental in promoting the goals of the Palestinians and in raising their afflictions to the center of the U.S. policymakers' agenda," the paper stated.

Kurtzer first rose to prominence in 1988 when as a State Department adviser he counseled the Reagan administration to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization led by Yasser Arafat. The PLO had carried out scores of anti-Western attacks, but in the late '80s Arafat claimed to have renounced violence.

In 1988, Kurtzer was noted as the principal author of a major policy speech by then-Secretary of State George Shultz in which the U.S. government first recognized the "legitimate rights" of the Palestinians.

Haaretz reported in 2001 that Kurtzer had a "vocal conflict" with an Israeli government official in Philadelphia in the summer of 1990 after Kurtzer "attacked the Israeli government for refusing to include the PLO in the peace process [and] said that this constituted the main obstacle to peace"

In Kurtzer's latest book, "Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East," he largely blames Israel for the collapse of U.S.-brokered negotiations at Camp David. Contradicting accounts by President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Ehud Barak, both of whom squarely blamed Arafat for refusing to make peace, Kurtzer argues in his book Israel did not offer enough concessions to the Palestinians.

At Camp David, Israel offered Arafat a state in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and eastern Jerusalem. According to multiple reports, Barak also offered Arafat the upper sections of the Temple Mount.