Two years ago congressman Robert Wexler was the first Jewish elected official to endorse Barack Obama for president outside the senator’s home town of Chicago.
Last year Mr Wexler toured synagogues in his native Florida with Mr Obama, trying to show Jewish American voters that the candidate was, as he puts it, “worthy of our trust”. It paid off: Mr Obama won 78 per cent of the Jewish vote nationwide.
Today, as the president finds himself at loggerheads with Israel over his demand that it stop settlements, lawmakers such as Mr Wexler represent a home front in the administration’s push for Middle East peace.
With its powers over the administration’s purse strings, the US Congress is a key factor in Washington’s foreign policy. Mr Wexler and many of his colleagues are quick to make clear their support for Mr Obama does not mean they endorse any sort of ultimatum for Israel to meet unconditionally. In any showdown between Mr Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, many of the president’s supporters in Congress will want compromise.
“The president has put forth his opening position,” Mr Wexler tells the FT in an interview. “I am confident the Israelis will put forth a credible plan on settlements and we need to give them some time and some space – not months, but some time and space – to develop that plan. “The Israeli response on settlements is not going to happen in isolation from what the Arab world is willing to do on normalising relations with Israel,” he adds, pointing to Mr Obama’s call for Arab states to foster ties with Israel.
Nita Lowey, who chairs the House of Representatives subcommittee responsible for the US’s foreign spending, struck a similar note in response to Mr Obama’s speech to the Muslim world last week. “While compromise will be required on both sides, the Palestinians and Arab states must unequivocally denounce terrorism, recognise Israel, cease anti-Israel incitement at home and within the United Nations, and support viable Palestinian Authority institutions.”
And while Hillary Clinton, Mr Obama’s secretary of state, maintains that Mr Obama’s call for a building freeze applies to all settlements without exception, on Capitol Hill, exceptions are just what are foreseen in any deal.
Mr Wexler says it is reasonable to expect the Israelis to implement a full settlement moratorium in communities east of Israel’s security barrier in the West Bank. That leaves the question of whether lesser measures would suffice for settlements to the west of the barrier. In such areas there are measures that could “support” a moratorium without being “absolute” – such as a minimum of building within existing lines or preventing settler influx from elsewhere.
He adds: “There is no division between me and the president on his policy… but a member of Congress is in a different role than the president.”
● Mrs Clinton has dismissed the Israeli government’s view it had an understanding with the Bush administration to permit the “natural growth” of Israeli settlements in the Palestinian occupied territories, reports Reuters.