CUFI Success: GOP Reinstates ‘Undivided’ Jerusalem into Platform

July 12, 2016

2 min read

By Sean Savage/JNS.org

The Republican Party has reportedly reinstated language endorsing an “undivided” Jerusalem into the party’s platform ahead of its national convention in Cleveland later this month.

According to CNN, which cited a first draft of the party platform that it obtained, the Republicans would reinstate a reference to an “undivided” Jerusalem while removing a reference to “Palestine” in support for a two-state solution.

The Republicans’ move comes in the aftermath of advocacy on the issue by the lobbying affiliate of Pastor John Hagee’s influential Christians United for Israel (CUFI) non-profit. In a letter obtained by JNS.org that was sent to Republican convention delegates on July 6, former Ronald Reagan administration official Gary Bauer, director of the CUFI Action Fund lobby, called for the Republican Party platform to “strengthen its language in support for Israel with Jerusalem as Israel’s ‘undivided, enteral’ capital.”

The CUFI Action Fund is a 501(c)(4) organization, meaning that it has more leeway on political activities than the 501(c)(3)-status CUFI. The Action Fund’s call stems from a small, yet significant change in the Republican Party’s platform language on Jerusalem from 2008 to 2012.

In 2008, the GOP platform included the sentence, “We support Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel and moving the American embassy to that undivided capital of Israel.” But in the 2012 platform, that sentence was missing, and the platform instead mentioned “Israel with Jerusalem as its capital”—without the word “undivided.”

“Many analysts in the Middle East saw this as a signal that even the pro-Israel Republican Party was in favor of the division of Jerusalem and supported awarding half of the city as a capital to a new Palestinian state,” stated the letter from the CUFI Action Fund.

Before the Republicans reinstated the language invoking an “undivided” Jerusalem, Bauer told JNS.org that he did not understand the GOP’s decision in 2012 to alter the language on the Israeli capital.

“It didn’t make any sense to do it,” said Bauer. “Certainly the current government in Israel has no intention of dividing Jerusalem, and from what I have seen in public opinion polls, there’s no real sentiment among the Israeli people to do it either.”

As such, Bauer said the CUFI Action Fund considers it important that at least one of the major American political parties “make it clear that no part of Jerusalem is a settlement.”

“It is a city with roots in Judaism that goes back well before any current competitor could lay claim on it,” Bauer said, referring to the Palestinians’ demands to divide Jerusalem and establish their own capital in the eastern half of the city.

 

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