Bush Does The Waive, One Last Time (Updated)

This is the last time that Bush will have the opportunity to renege on his promise:

President Bush extended for six months his waiver of a law mandating the move of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

The waiver order, sent to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Dec. 4 and published Tuesday, cites the "national security interests of the United States" in waiving the Jerusalem Embassy Act for six months.

Bush and his predecessor, President Bill Clinton, have routinely waived the act since its passage in 1995, citing the dangers that Muslim outrage over such an act would pose to U.S. interests in the Middle East.

Clinton and Bush also have favored delaying such a move until the city's status is settled in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

This is the last time that Bush waives the law.

Granted that Obama did not go so far as to promise moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, the fact remains that the law will come up for reconsideration every 6 months during his term as well. 

Can there be any doubt what he will do?

UPDATE: On the topic, here is something I received from CAMERA:

El País, Spain's leading newspaper and, indeed, the most important one in the Spanish-speaking world in terms of influence and circulation, has resumed its deplorable practice of falsely reporting that Tel Aviv is the capital of Israel. In its on-line International Section, El País typically features a short side-bar profile of the person or country discussed in the main article.

In the case of all stories about Israel, the adjoining profile had until several months ago routinely identified that nation's capital as Tel Aviv. After a letter from the head of CAMERA's new Spanish-language ReVista Web site on September 7th, 2008, urging the appropriate city be cited, the newspaper corrected the location of Israel's capital to read: "Jerusalén".

Very likely, a counter-effort by Israel's detractors ensued to reverse this important correction because, regrettably, El País is once more back to citing Tel Aviv in its side-bar information.

CAMERA is suggesting taking the following actions:

We urge CAMERA's English-language writers to participate in this Alert with our ReVista Spanish writers and contact El País in either English or Spanish to call for permanent correction of this blatant and serious error.

 

1) Write (either in Spanish or English) to: cartasdirector@elpais.es. Be sure to include your name and address.

 

2) Or call El Pais at  011-34-91-337-8200

 

3) Send copies to letters@camera.org

CAMERA also provides some background information:

The US State Department's Web site cites Jerusalem as the capital and indicates "Israel proclaimed Jerusalem as its capital in 1950. The United States, like nearly all other countries, maintains its embassy in Tel Aviv."

 

Additional background information regarding Israel's capital is included in the ReVista letter to El Pais. We include first the English translation, followed by the original, below:

The capital of Israel is not, and never was, Tel Aviv. The capital of Israel, where all the officials of government work, from the President, to the legislative body (Knesset) and most ministries of government as well as the Supreme Court, is Jerusalem, from the day on which Israel declared itself and was recognized as an independent and sovereign state. The seat of the capital has never changed since then. In the year 1967 the city of Jerusalem was re-unified, after 19 years of being divided; however the seat of the officers of government remained the same, in the western part of the city. The decision on the designation of a country's capital belongs to its people and their government. For example, The US Congress 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act states that "every country designates its own capital". This same Act, recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

 

For some of the history surrounding Jerusalem's status from the international legal perspective, click here.

 

It is not the job of a newspaper, neither El País's nor any other, to decide on a country's capital city. If Jerusalem is not acceptable to El País for whatever reason, even when it is the seat of government of that country, El País does not possess the privilege of deciding which city it would like as the capital and misinform its readers. To choose Tel Aviv as the capital is completely arbitrary and erroneous. The job of recognizing a country or its capital falls on the governments of other countries, such as Spain's government, while the mission of a newspaper is to offer correct and true information to its readers.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Jerusalem.