In a near obligatory appearance before the powerful Jewish American foreign policy lobby, AIPAC [video], Senator Obama told the attendees that Israeli security was "sacrosanct", and that America would defend the state of Israel with its capital in "an undivided Jerusalem". The latter statement ignores the historic and demographic facts on the ground in Palestine. East Jerusalem and the Old City have been historically an Arab quarter until it was occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War. A return to pre-1967 borders has been a consistent hallmark of Palestinian Arab demands for territory in return for peace. Relinquishing Arab territorial claims to the ethnically Arab Old City has been rejected by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. Undoubtedly the Arab "street" will see Obama's announcement as no change in an unreasonable bias towards Israel as part of US attempts to resolve their 120 year old conflict. Even the last Democratic president was willing to negotiate the issue of control of East Jerusalem with Yassar Arafat at Camp David.[1] Failure to recognize Arab's territorial claims to East Jerusalem and the site of Haram ash Sharif robs third party intermediaries of needed negotiating flexibility to resolve the interlocking issues of territory, soverignty, security and resettlement separating the beligerents.
[1] Morris, Righteous Victims, 2001 p.659