Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) told a prominent Jewish group yesterday that the "security of Israel is paramount" and pledged that as president he would never push Israel into peace agreements against its interest. At the same time, he criticized President Bush for too often "disengaging" from the effort to forge a U.S.-Palestinian settlement.
On a day when Israeli politics were especially unsettled, Kerry's noontime remarks to leaders of the Anti-Defamation League seemed aimed at treading a middle path. While repeating some of his standard criticisms of Bush's foreign policy, he said the emphatic U.S. support for Israel -- which has won Bush a measure of support from what is historically one of the Democratic Party's most reliable voting blocs -- would be no less steadfast in a Kerry administration.
"As president, my promise to the people of Israel is this: I will never force Israel to make concessions that cost or compromise any of Israel's security," Kerry said. "The security of Israel is paramount. . . . We will also never expect Israel to negotiate peace without a credible [Palestinian] partner. And it is up to the United States in my judgment to do a better job of helping the Arab world to help that partner to evolve and to develop."
Kerry made only a quick nod to the news of the moment: the vote in a Likud Party referendum Sunday to reject Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to unilaterally withdraw troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip. Bush and Kerry had embraced Sharon's plan at the same time they endorsed several concessions to Israel about the terms of an eventual settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The snubbing of Sharon by his party was a setback for Bush, and leaves the path to a settlement more uncertain than ever.
"Obviously, yesterday's vote raises questions about where things are going," Kerry said. "Israel has long wanted to be out of Gaza. . . . And whatever the future of this particular plan, if elected president I will guarantee you that I will work continuously, never disengaging as this administration did for so long, in a way that will advance that cause."
Rather than dwell on the uncertainties of the present, Kerry devoted much of his talk to personal reminiscence. In animated tones, he spoke of his first visit to Israel, which he said was under the auspices of the ADL and the late Leonard P. "Lenny" Zakim, longtime director of the group's New England chapter. Kerry said he went to the Golan Heights, visited the Sea of Galilee and "actually stood on the Mount of the Beatitudes and read the Sermon on the Mount to those gathered with me."
The highlight, though, came when Kerry, a licensed pilot, persuaded the Israeli Air Force to let him see the country from above, by taking the controls of a training jet.
"So I went up to about 12,000 feet and proceeded to go in and do a loop," Kerry recounted, to appreciative laughter from the audience. "And I want you to know, ladies and gentlemen, that to be able to come out upside down and look down and catch the horizon in back of me, and see all the way down into the Sinai, to the old base that had been given up, all the way across into Jordan, all the way out into the Gulf of Aqaba, and to see Israel beneath me . . . and to see it all upside down was the perfect way to see the Middle East and Israel."
