News Brief

AIPAC’s executive committee added U.S. recognition of Jerusalem and the Fatah charter to the lobby’s action agenda. The executive committee, made up in part of representatives of major American Jewish groups, this week approved virtually all of the draft agenda for this year’s American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference. The draft agenda, prepared by AIPAC staff as a document that reflects pro-Israel consensus, focused principally on backing sanctions against Iran until it ends its suspected nuclear weapons program, increasing defense assistance to Israel and backing Israel’s peace negotiations. When it came to a vote Monday, the Zionist Organization of America successfully proposed a clause urging Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah Party to renounce 10 purported clauses in its 1965 charter that call for Israel’s destruction. Efforts elsewhere to make an issue of the 1965 charter have languished. This is largely because advocates of its abrogation have not located an original copy authenticating the 10 offensive clauses, historical evidence suggests the charter was in any case abrogated in 1989, and the current political entity named Fatah bears little constitutional relation to the Fatah Party that approved the charter in 1965. ZOA also proposed an amendment that passed urging the president to stop waiving U.S. legislation that would move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which President Bush did again Wednesday. It is unusual for AIPAC to explicitly oppose executive branch policy. Another ZOA amendment, urging the United Nations to resettle Palestinian refugees, was defeated.