Barack Obama secures the Democratic nomination; Obama receives flak for his remarks on Jerusalem at AIPAC meeting
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    • In one of the most remarkable campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination which witnessed a close fight between the first female and an African-American contender, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, Chicago emerged victorious after crossing the threshold of 2,118 delegates on June 31. Sen. Hillary Clinton, though initially insisting that she was the stronger candidate as she had won the popular vote, formally ended her campaign on June 82. In a speech in Washington, she urged her supporters to help elect Sen. Obama.

    On the question of whether she would become his running mate, Clinton stated that she would consider anything that would help the Democrats win the Presidential elections in November. Sen. Obama on his part set up a three-member vice-presidential selection committee. While choosing Clinton might help in uniting the party after the acrimony of the primary campaign, reports noted that it ran the risk of disappointing many Obama supporters who had over the past 19 months witnessed a staple on how Sen. Obama was different from Sen. Clinton3.

    Reports also noted another challenge that the Democrats would face in the coming days. This was regarding handling the campaign finance machineries of Obama and Clinton. Several of Obama’s finance officials had earlier stated that if Clinton dropped out of the race, they would invite her top fund-raisers to join Sen. Obama’s national finance committee at a meeting in Chicago on June 194. They estimated that the well-connected Clinton team could raise between $50-$75 million for Mr. Obama. However, as the Clinton camp relied more on ‘Big Money’ while Obama received record campaign collections through small donors, analysts believed that getting support from big corporations and lobbies would expose Obama to criticism as he had been constantly asserting that he would work to reduce the role of ‘special interests’ in politics. Further, the two camps had very different styles of managing campaign finances.

    Meanwhile, in what was an oblique jab at Sen. Obama’s statements on engaging countries like Iran and Syria in talks, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in an address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on June 3, asserted that any dialogue with Iran was pointless as that country was still pursuing nuclear weapons.

    Sen. Obama and Sen. Hilary Clinton also addressed the same gathering on June 45. Obama presented himself as a friend of Israel and assured the AIPAC members that he would work towards ensuring the security of Israel from any hostile source, including Gaza and Tehran. He however stated that recent American foreign policy had not ensured the same. Acknowledging the role of Iran, Syria and Hamas in spreading extremism, Obama asserted that the present American policies had failed to address any of the challenges posed by these nations and groups and that these policies had only fueled instability and terrorism in the Middle East6.

    Obama also stated that Jerusalem should remain the capital of Israel and that it should not be divided under the terms of any Israeli-Palestinian peace pact, as a divided city would be "very difficult to execute." The remarks caused uproar among Jewish and Palestinian groups. Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, told Al Jazeera on June 5 that Obama’s remark was "the worst thing to happen to us since 1967 ... he has given ammunition to extremists across the region." Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas also asserted that an independent Palestinian state without Jerusalem as its capital would not be acceptable7. Obama later clarified that it was up to the parties to the conflict to decide on the status of Jerusalem. Maintaining that Israel had a legitimate claim to the city, Obama called for access for everybody to the extraordinary religious sites of the holy city8.

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