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Two evenings ago, speaking before the American-Israeli Pubic Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Barack Obama desperately attempted to win back his floundering support among the American Jewish community by demonstrating his hawkish, pro-Israel stance. This is neither unusual nor suspect—especially in the United States where the Jewish demographic tends to be more fundamentally Zionist than the Israelis themselves and aspiring candidates are almost required to recite Theodor Herzl’s Der Judenstaat by heart.

Naturally, Obama made the typical platitudes: “Israel has the right to defend itself”, “I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend … Israel”, ad nauseam. But then he said something that could have caused Ariel Sharon to crack a smile through his coma:

“Any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognised, defensible borders. And Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and must remain undivided,” he said to rapturous clapping and cheering.

What? East Jerusalem will remain part of Israel? Have U.S. politicians finally ceased pretending they support a negotiated settlement?

After all, Israel illegally occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, illegally annexed it in 1980 and has built a virtual forest of illegal, Jewish-only settlements between the greater West Bank and East Jerusalem ever since. Naturally, Palestinians see East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state and the center of Palestinian cultural life… so these illegal settlements are clearly aimed at severing East Jerusalem from the rest of Palestine.

The imperialistic intentions are obvious… and the international community (including the United States) has never officially recognized East Jerusalem as part of Israel. In fact, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 478 declaring Israel’s annexation “null and void” and a violation of International Law. Because of this, most countries have moved their embassies from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv—including the United States.

Moreover, American politicians have typically avoided addressing the Jerusalem issue so directly, referring to East Jerusalem as “disputed” (like Bill Clinton) or some other euphemism for “illegally occupied and annexed”. But perhaps we should praise Obama for his candid remarks; he has truly expressed Washington’s current opinions anyway.

As I have written before, Obama supports Israel’s killing of Palestinian civilians, but with this latest incident it seems that he also harbors contempt for Security Council Resolutions 242 and 478 among others by insisting that Jerusalem will remain undivided.

As Angry Arab wrote recently, Anyone “who thinks that Obama will be good for Palestine deserves to have a shoe thrown at him/her”.