“Even the blunder-prone George W. Bush avoided messing-up the U.S. role” Like Romney’s Done

Mitt Romney has proposed turning back the clock on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process by officially recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and relocating the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv, actions that analysts say would almost certainly lead to new terrorist attacks against American and Israeli interests, strain relationships with allies and require a major financial investment.

 Jerusalem

WorldTVNews.com consultants montoring Romney’s visit to Israel pointed out the U.S. and much of the international community do not officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital, because Palestinians claim it, too.

“Personally, I think the embassy should be moved,” said one WorldTVNews.com consultant who supports international recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital.  “But what will the ramifications be in terms of the financial cost and human life?  What’s going to happen is you’re going to have to find a building or build one in Jerusalem.  It’s going to come under attack.”

Logistically, the WorldTVNews.com analyst said, it makes more sense to have an embassy in Tel Aviv than Jerusalem because of proximity to the international airport and other factors.

“How much money and how many lives are you willing to spend (to relocate to Jerusalem)?” he proposed as a question for Romney.

“Fewer Israelis were killed during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama than during the first four years of George W. Bush,” he added.

Another WorldTVNews.com consultant suggested Romney might have no real intention of moving the embassy to Jerusalem but made the comments to raise large amounts of campaign money while in Israel and pander to certain groups of voters in the U.S.

“Romney’s statement about moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, if elected, is particularly significant. That’s red meat for, among others, political conservatives in the American Jewish community,” the WorldTVNews.com consultant said Sunday.  “The consequences of a London gaffe are little more than a tabloid row which has already been overshadowed by the Olympics. The degree of difficulty goes up significantly when diving into Israel’s political waters, and one can quickly wind up at the bottom of the deep end.”

James Clarke

In Europe, WorldTVNews.com consultant James Clarke said a CNN interview in which Romney declared “Jerusalem is Israel’s capital” caught his attention, because Romney appeared to offer turning over some decisions about the U.S. embassy to Israeli officials.

“I think it’s long been the policy to ultimately have our embassy in the nation’s capital of Jerusalem,” Romney told CNN.  “I would follow the same policy we have had in the past.  Our embassy would be in the capital, and the timing of that is something I would want to work out with the government.”

“It is nothing short of dumbfounding that any serious U.S. politician should place an important decision of State in the hands of a foreign government,” Clarke told WorldTVNews.com in a statement from Ireland.  “It has been a long-standing policy of all U.S. administrations since the 1967 conquest of East Jerusalem by Israel’s IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) in the valiant Six Day War not to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.  Romney’s break with that long-standing cross-party policy smacks of desperation and political opportunism at the expense of a balanced and well thought-out foreign policy based on the pursuit of a just and durable peace in the Middle East and between Israel and Palestine in particular.”

Clarke has written about what he describes as Romney’s “many gaffes and ill-considered foreign policy statements” over the past few days, including an adviser’s suggestion that Romney supports Israel launching a war against Iran.

“Even the blunder-prone George W. Bush avoided messing-up the U.S. role in trying to achieve a peace settlement there,” Clarke said.  “In fact, it was Romney’s predecessor Bush who railed against the then-Israeli government’s plan to pepper the Palestinian West Bank with so many Jewish settlements that it looked like a Swiss cheese, so making it a non-viable state. One must wonder at a Romney administration’s attitude to this same issue were he to be elected in the November presidential elections.”

WorldTVNews.com provides news forecasting, media consulting and crisis communications services to its clients.  To put our experience to work for you, email news@WorldTVNews.com.

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