In advance of traveling to Israel next week, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was asked again about his statement at last month’s AIPAC policy conference that Jerusalem “must remain undivided” as the capital of Israel. After stating that his AIPAC speech contained “poor phrasing” on this, Sen. Obama stated:
“The point we were simply making was, is that we don’t want barbed wire running through Jerusalem, similar to the way it was prior to the ’67 war, that it is possible for us to create a Jerusalem that is cohesive and coherent….[and] “that the Clinton formulation [of a shared Jerusalem] is a starting point” for negotiations.”

Watch here at 6:30 mins. Sen. Obama goes on to say he believes what Israelis and Palestinians both want are “some practical common sense approaches that would result in them feeling safe and secure.”

As we’ve already pointed out, if the criteria for Jerusalem is practicality, then that argues for maintaining the holy city in its current unified form under Israeli sovereignty – this has yielded the practical result of a cohesive city in which people of all faiths have access to all holy sites.Perhaps Senator Obama can learn more about this when he visits Jerusalem next week – we hope so.
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