I often wonder what historians one hundred years from now will make of U.S. policy in the Middle East, a part of the world where vital U.S. national interests require good (or at least functional) relations with a variety of countries. In particular, how they will explain the strange phenomenon of potential leaders of the most powerful nation on earth having to genuflect before the advocates of one small, foreign nation in the Levant before they can hold high office.
It is a strange spectacle to see an Israeli, Jewish, Zionist member of the Knesset stand in front of that body on 3 June 2008 and say, as MK Avshalom Vilan did: "We're lying to ourselves for political reasons to make it impossible to reach a political solution in Jerusalem... Jerusalem will be the capital of the Palestinian state also." And then, just 24 hours later, to see a U.S. Presidential candidate having to stand up in front of AIPAC and mouth the rhetoric of the Israeli right about Jerusalem being Israel's "undivided" capital, just to prove himself worthy of elected office in the United States.
Good luck to them explaining that one in a way our great-grandchildren can understand.
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