WASHINGTON — Igniting a controversy at home, House Speaker Newt Gingrich told the Israeli parliament Tuesday that Congress supports Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's reasons for rejecting a U.S. plan to break a 14-month stalemate in the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.
Although Gingrich's remarks to the Knesset were tamer than some of his comments on the subject in Washington of late, the speech trampled on the tradition that U.S. politicians should not criticize American foreign policy while on foreign soil.
White House spokesman Mike McCurry said Gingrich's "impromptu cheering from the sidelines" was likely to harden Israel's negotiating position further, making it tougher for the U.S. government to play its customary role as mediator in the Middle East conflict.
In his speech to the Knesset, Gingrich--third in line for the White House behind President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore--paraphrased Netanyahu's rejection of a U.S.-designed compromise to settle a festering territorial dispute with the Palestinian Authority. "We cannot allow non-Israelis to substitute their judgment for the generals that Israel has trusted with its security," he said.
And on perhaps the most sensitive issue between Israel and the Palestinians, Gingrich endorsed Israel's claim to Jerusalem as its "united and eternal capital."
The speaker, who last week had heeded Clinton administration requests not to provoke problems by visiting the site, pointedly reminded Israeli lawmakers Tuesday that Congress has ordered the transfer of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, a symbolic act designed to reinforce Israel's claim. Although the law requires the embassy to move next year, the Clinton administration opposes the switch and may find a way to thwart it.
While Gingrich took no new positions, his words further inflamed the already overheated Israeli-Palestinian dispute.
As he was addressing the Knesset, Palestinian legislators and Arab residents of the walled Old City clashed with Israeli police in an Arab protest over new Jewish construction in the Muslim quarter. Both Israelis and Palestinians said the melee indicated that the controversy over Jerusalem is heating up.
Gingrich's speech was something of a flip side to First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's remarks earlier this month that creation of a Palestinian state would contribute to peace in the Middle East. Israel's supporters complained that her comments encouraged Palestinians to take a hard line at the negotiating table. Administration officials and advocates of Israeli-Palestinian peace now are saying the Georgia Republican's speech stiffened the Israeli position.
