House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu attend a joint press conference at Jerusalem’s King David Hotel on May 24, 1998 (Photo: Amos Ben Gershom/Israel Government Press Office)

(CNSNews.com) – As the Republican presidential candidates’ Middle East policies come into focus, a look back at a trip to Jerusalem by one of them 13 years ago provides a reminder of the sensitive ground they tread – and the hostility they can expect to confront in taking a strongly pro-Israel stance.

Six GOP presidential hopefuls took turns addressing a Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) forum in Washington on Wednesday, highlighting their positions on Israel, Iran’s nuclear ambitions and radical Islam.

Rep. Michele Bachmann and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich both drew enthusiastic applause with pledges to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. (Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Sen. Rick Santorum have made similar commitments during the primary campaign.)

Gingrich reminded the RJC audience that he had introduced legislation in the House in 1995 recognizing Israel’s claim to Jerusalem as its capital and making it U.S. policy to move the embassy there.

The Jerusalem Embassy Act flew in the face of longstanding U.S. policy, which has never recognized Israel’s administration of the eastern part of the city and holds that Jerusalem’s future must be determined in peace negotiations.

President Clinton allowed the measure to become law without his signature and invoked an inbuilt six-monthly waiver to delay the move on national security grounds. Presidents Bush and Obama did so too – in the latter’s case, most recently last Friday.

Diplomats in all three administrations argued that relocating the embassy would undermine U.S. claims to impartiality and could spark violence, a position largely backed by the foreign policy community.

Israel invokes a 3,000-year history and the Bible in backing its claim to Jerusalem; Palestinian leaders want Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state, and the Islamic world is adamantly opposed to enduring Jewish control of an area that includes sites revered by Muslims.

Should either be elected, Bachmann and Gingrich have both vowed to set the wheels in motion for the embassy move on their first day in office, leaving themselves no room for deferral.

In May 1998, Gingrich waded into the Mideast cauldron with a visit to Jerusalem that coincided with the 50th anniversary of Israel’s reestablishment as a state and the inaugural celebration of Jerusalem Day, when Israelis mark the day the city was reunited during the 1967 Six Day War. (It had been divided between Israeli- and Jordanian-controlled sectors for the previous 19 years.)

Before traveling, the then-House Speaker said he and Minority Leader Dick Gephardt would visit a site in Jerusalem earmarked for the U.S. Embassy. The U.S. in 1991 had obtained municipal building permission for the empty property, located just inside the area Israel controlled before 1967 – in other words, not in territory generally regarded as disputed.

PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat responded to the news by saying Gingrich was “playing with fire,” and predicting “many deaths” would occur.

“All the blood that will be shed – he’ll bear it on his conscience,” Erekat told the Associated Press, insisting his remarks were a warning, not a threat.

Through a spokesperson, Gingrich asked why the Palestinians “must threaten bloodshed instead of talking matters through.” The plan moved ahead.

But on the eve of the four-day visit, Gingrich announced that he had called off the visit to the embassy site, at the behest of the Clinton administration.

He told CNN he would not be “bullied” by Erekat’s threatening remarks “but we did want to cooperate with the Clinton administration and it was their recommendation we not do it.”

Controversy dogged the visit, however, with Gingrich then coming under fire from administration officials over a comment he had made almost two weeks earlier.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had just delivered a speech aimed at pushing forward the U.S.-sponsored peacemaking effort – which at the time was going through one of its many stalemates – and expressed exasperation at Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s reluctance to withdraw from additional parts of the West Bank, despite a U.S. deadline.

“I think it’s wrong for the American secretary of state to become the agent for the Palestinians,” Gingrich said in response on May 12. “Our job should be to get the two of them [Israelis and Palestinians] to a table where they find an agreement, not to have us pressuring the Israelis to make an agreement.”

The administration did not react at the time, but did so on May 26 – the last day of Gingrich’s Israel visit – with White House spokesman Mike McCurry calling Gingrich’s comments about Albright “offensive” and State Department spokesman James Rubin describing them as “appalling and outrageous.”

‘Undivided, eternal capital’

Further controversy ensued when Gingrich, who was due to meet with PLO chairman Yasser Arafat in Gaza at the end of his visit, expressed the hope that Erekat would not attend, saying he had “no interest in meeting with somebody who in effect was publicly threatening bloodshed over a peaceful visit.”

Erekat fired back, calling Gingrich “ignorant” and saying it was not for the American to say who should attend. (In the end, Erekat was not present, although he said he had never intended to be there in the first place.)

Before leaving Jerusalem, Gingrich addressed a special session of the Israeli Knesset, telling the lawmakers that their U.S. counterparts “stand with you today in recognizing Jerusalem as the united and eternal capital of Israel.”

Although his words mirrored those used by Bill Clinton while campaigning for the presidency in 1992, Gingrich was accused of further roiling Washington’s peace efforts, and in the ensuing days, he was excoriated in the mainstream media at home.

“Heavy-footed Newt Gingrich stomped through the Middle East with all the sensitivity of a hob-nailed boot,” editorialized the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, while the St. Louis Post-Dispatch said he was “just being his incendiary self.”

A Washington Post columnist wrote that Gingrich “ought to shut his mouth entirely – especially when abroad,” while a Seattle Times editorial on the visit was headlined, “Next Time, Stay Home.”

It was left to conservative syndicated columnist Cal Thomas to defend Gingrich’s remarks.

Referring in a column to the Speaker’s comments while in Israel about Palestinian incitement to violence, Thomas wrote, “While some in the State Department and the American media expressed shock at Gingrich’s comments, he is one of the few top American leaders in recent years to state the obvious and courageously stand up for the only democracy in the region.”