“The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today… Jerusalem is not a settlement. It’s our capital.” (PM Netanyahu)

"I have set watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem; they shall never hold their peace day or night. You who make mention of the Lord, do not keep silent, and give Him no rest till He establishes and till He makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth." (Psalm 62:6-7)

Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu arrived at the White House at 5:30 on Tuesday after a show of solidarity with leaders of Congress from both parties.  Netanyahu thanked the U.S. lawmakers for their “constant support” and “unflagging” friendship.  “Even though the challenges are immense, our will and our partnership is also immense,” Netanyahu said at an appearance with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH).

Netanyahu conferred privately with President Obama for nearly 90 minutes in the Oval Office.  A White House official said the president then went to his residence and Netanyahu remained at the White House to consult with his staff in the Roosevelt Room.  Netanyahu requested another meeting with Obama, who returned to the Oval Office to meet with Netanyahu from 8:20 p.m. to 8:55 p.m.  Netanyahu left the White House at 9:05 p.m. without speaking to reporters at a stakeout.

Netanyahu’s office issued a brief statement Wednesday morning, stating that after the meetings, the two leaders’ teams of advisers “continued to discuss the ideas that were raised.” Netanyahu was scheduled to hold an additional round of talks with special Mideast envoy George Mitchell later on Wednesday in Washington.  The two sides are in a stand-off over ongoing housing projects in Jerusalem. Plans to build 20 apartments near a Jewish-owned hotel in east Jerusalem were announced just hours before the leaders met.  There was no customary White House welcome and handshake for photographers.

White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said on Wednesday the White House continues to believe that Israeli building in Jerusalem is destructive to the Middle East “peace” process.

Netanyahu had outlined Jerusalem’s Jewish history during a moving speech at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Conference on Tuesday night — from before the time David had shepherded sheep in the hills of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) to the present day.  “The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today,” Netanyahu pointed out.   “Jerusalem is not a settlement. It’s our capital,” he declared.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said in a London interview: “I don’t understand why the Americans are upset…. No government has ever frozen building in Jerusalem, not a Labor party government or Kadima. I think it would have been wise if the Americans had come and learned the details before they took a position.”

“There are detailed, public master plans for the good of all [the residents of Jerusalem]…. If the Americans had come and learned the plans, they wouldn’t have reacted as they did. To my regret, their policy was set according to what appeared in the Palestinian press,” Mayor Narkat maintained.

Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle have called on the Obama Administration to defuse tension between Washington and Jerusalem. See a list of Congressional statements. Rep. Gary Peters (D-MI) said, “I hope that the Administration will end its unnecessary denunciations of Israel and will instead turn its focus to working with Congress to finally enact strong sanctions on Iran.” Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) engaged in a colloquy with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) saying, “the American relationship with Israel is one of the strongest, most important, most steadfast bilateral alliances we have in the world because … it is based on shared values, shared strategic interests in the world, and, unfortunately, now on the fact that we in the United States and the Israelis are also targets of the Islamist extremists.”

Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the United States Military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) testified before the Senate a week ago and dropped a “bombshell,” accusing Israel of “intransience” In the Middle East.  Military observers are expressing a growing concern that Petraeus’ statement might indicate a shift in military ties and cooperation between the U.S. and Israel, the sharing of intelligence and operational assessments, as well as future joint exercises.

Star Parker’s editorial in IFA’s June, 2009 First Friday Prayer Letter outlines the overall shift in Obama policy toward Israel.

Major newspaper editorial boards and Middle East experts have called for the U.S. to defuse publicly escalating tensions with Israel, a critical U.S. ally in the region. “It has been startling — and a little puzzling — to see Mr. Obama deliberately plunge into another public brawl with the Jewish state,” The Washington Post wrote on Tuesday.  A day earlier, The Wall Street Journal questioned the administration’s strategy in Israeli-Palestinian talks. “If the Obama Administration opts to transform itself, as the Europeans have, into another set of lawyers for the Palestinians, it will find Israeli concessions increasingly hard to come by,” said the paper’s lead editorial.

Netanyahu’s Washington visit appeared designed in part to cement the Israeli perspective that Jerusalem is an indivisible city and that Jewish housing developments in neighborhoods such as Maale Adumim (see map on left) are strategically necessary to the transportation infrastructure and security of the city and nation — such as the traffic artery shown to the Dead Sea.

“Today, nearly a quarter of a million Jews, almost half the city’s Jewish population, live in neighborhoods that are just beyond the 1949 armistice lines,” Netanyahu said. “Everyone knows that these neighborhoods will be part of Israel in any peace settlement. Therefore, building in them in no way precludes the possibility of a two-state solution.”

On Monday, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, publicly reframed the relationship between the two countries by breaking from the virtually unquestioning support of the previous administrations to say that the present one will “say so unequivocally” when it doesn’t agree with Israeli policy.

In an uncompromising AIPAC speech, in large part built around the position that Israel faces a perpetual threat of destruction, Netanyahu reminded the audience of the long history of persecution and barbarity against the Jewish people.

Comparing the size of Israel to that of New Jersey, he asked how we would feel with the Hezbollah terrorists on New Jersey’s northern border releasing 6,000 missiles, bringing in 50,000 more from Iran, and with Hamas on the southern border releasing 6,000 rockets and smuggling in more missiles, weapons and munitions through tunnels from Egypt.  He then pointedly noted that “the future of the Jewish state can never depend on the goodwill of even the greatest of men…. Israel must always reserve the right to defend itself.”

“While we cherish our homeland, we also recognize that Palestinians live there as well. We don’t want to govern them. We don’t want to rule them. We want them as neighbors, living in security, dignity and peace. Yet Israel is unjustly accused of not wanting peace with the Palestinians. Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said.  < listen to his speech here >

Read “Praying and Fasting for Jerusalem” by Derek Prince.