Clinton's Foreign Policy Is Lawless, Too The administration blatantly violates the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995. BY IRA STOLL Mention the phrase "rule of law" in connection with the Clinton administration, and what's likely to pop into your mind is an image of Monica Lewinsky or of Al Gore and the Buddhist monks, not the stone walls of Jerusalem's Old City. But a furor that has erupted in Israel during the past few days over remarks made by the U.S. ambassador there makes it clear that the erosion that began with perjury and campaign-finance violations has now spread to a law affecting the conduct of foreign policy and the capital of Israel. Ambassador Martin Indyk made his controversial comments at a ceremony on Thursday at which he received an honorary degree from Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem. Mr. Indyk quoted President Clinton quoting Yitzhak Rabin on the willingness of Israel to take "risks for peace." Then Mr. Indyk, continued, using the Hebrew pronunciation of Jerusalem and getting himself into trouble: The challenge for the negotiators, and ultimately for Israelis and Palestinians alike, is to build a peace that is fashioned on that same basis of tolerance, mutual respect, compromise and coexistence. The greatest challenge in this regard lies here, in 'Yerushalaim,' a city so sacred and special to Jews, yet holy to Christians and Muslims, too. There is no other solution but to share the Holy City. It is not, and cannot be, the exclusive preserve of one religion, and the solution cannot come from one side challenging or denying another side's beliefs. Here too, mutual respect is the foundation for any agreement. Israeli reaction to Mr. Indyk's call for a shared Jerusalem was swift and harsh. There is a recognition across the Israeli political spectrum that a "shared Jerusalem" is another way of saying a divided Jerusalem. As a practical matter, access to Jerusalem's holy sites and public places is already shared by residents and pilgrims of all religions. Religious sites, such as the Western Wall, Church of the Holy Sepulchre and Al-Aksa mosque, are controlled by officials of the religions to which the sites are holy. That means that, notwithstanding the subsequent denials by other State Department officials, Mr. Indyk would have had no reason to bring the matter up in the context of talk about "risks for peace" unless he had in mind an end to the current status of sole Israeli political sovereignty over the city. While couched in the language of a kindergarten teacher--how could anyone be against sharing?--Mr. Indyk's remarks, Israelis realized, had all the subtlety of an imperial ruler issuing decrees to some distant colony. So the mayor of Jerusalem, Ehud Olmert, was quoted this week in the Jerusalem Post as saying, "I don't know that Martin Indyk is a religious commentator, and I don't need him or any other to advise us on how to live in complete religious freedom." Mr. Olmert continued, "If the statement was official and endorsed by the president of the United States, then this is the first time that I can recall that the president and the U.S. officially and publicly sponsored the actual division of Jerusalem." A powerful Israeli lawmaker from the opposition Likud Party, Uzi Landau, was quoted in the Post as demanding that Washington recall Mr. Indyk, saying that the ambassador's remarks can only be interpreted as a call for the "repartitioning" of the city. (Jerusalem was divided between Israel and Jordan from 1948 to 1967, a period in which synagogues were sacked and the Jordanian army used Jewish tombstones to line its latrines.) And the president of the Zionist Organization of America, Morton Klein, is calling for Mr. Indyk's removal. Which brings us to Bill Clinton and the rule of law. The legislation governing American policy toward Jerusalem is the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995. That law is crystal clear. It says: "Statement of the Policy of the United States. (1) Jerusalem should remain an undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected. (2) Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel; and (3) the United States Embassy in Israel should be established in Jerusalem no later than May 31, 1999." The act contains a clause that would have withheld funding from the State Department if the embassy were not moved to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv by the May 1999 deadline. But that penalty clause also includes a national-security waiver. Mr. Clinton has invoked the waiver, thus avoiding the financial penalty. But the "statement of the policy of the United States" is still the law of the land--yet Mr. Indyk, not to mention Mr. Clinton, is brazenly flouting it. They are doing so not only by Mr. Indyk's comment and by the failure to move the embassy, but by many other slights, such as the State Department's decision to stamp the passports of Americans born in Jerusalem with the word "Jerusalem" rather than "Jerusalem, Israel." A State Department official I spoke to about the Jerusalem Embassy Act claimed that "we're not in violation of it at all." He made some noises about how under the Constitution, foreign policy is set by the executive branch, not Congress. But when I asked him if he was saying the Jerusalem Embassy Act is unconstitutional, he demurred. If Mr. Clinton thought the law was unconstitutional, he should have vetoed it, rather than allowing it to become law and then transgressing it. And on the matter of whether the administration is violating the law, the State Department official--who would speak only on condition of anonymity--has less credibility on this issue than do the senators who wrote the law to begin with. One of those senators is Jon Kyl, a Republican from Arizona. When I asked Mr. Kyl this week if the administration was violating the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act, he replied, "Yes. The act requires the embassy to be moved by May of 1999, and they didn't do it. The waiver applies to the penalty and not the underlying obligation." Another is Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a New York Democrat, who said in a written statement to the Jewish Forward newspaper on Aug. 12, 1999, "The United States remains in violation of Public Law 104-45, the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995." The Founders, in their wisdom, saw this problem coming, and, in Article II of the Constitution, wrote that the president "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." They even made the president swear an oath before entering office, that he "will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States." When it comes to Jerusalem, as in so many other cases, Mr. Clinton has broken that promise. Mr. Stoll is editor of Smartertimes.com, North American editor of the Jerusalem Post and a contributor to OpinionJournal.com. Seth Lipsky returns next week. Copyright © 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.