Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum leveled scathing criticism at US President Barack Obama and his GOP rival Mitt Romney for failing to officially recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Rick Santorum - Photo: AP

In a feature article published in the New York Daily News, Santorum said that the fact that Obama and Romney “won’t state this basic fact” is a mistake.”It has been longstanding US policy not to officially recognize any part of Jerusalem as part of Israel — and it is dead wrong,” he wrote.

Mitt Romney- Photo: AP

The republican presidential hopeful further lamented the “huge divide between the Obama administration’s position and that of the government of Israel with regard to Jerusalem.”

To Jews, he continued “Jerusalem is the holiest city, and has the holiest site, the Temple Mount, which includes the Western Wall… When Israel became a state more than 60 years ago, Jerusalem, though it was divided at the time and the Western Wall was in Jordanian hands, was declared Israel’s capital.”

Santorum further added that any concession in Jerusalem would “leave Israel without defensible borders.

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated, as have other Israeli prime ministers, that he will never divide Jerusalem,” he wrote.

Romney, he added, “Does not have a different position from that of the President. He has not expressed his opinion about the Obama administration’s position on Jerusalem.”

Santorum added that he voted in favor of relocating the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 1995. “The Jerusalem Embassy Act made it US law to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” he stressed.

“A Santorum administration would mean that next year, there will be a Passover Seder at the new US Embassy in Jerusalem — and when Jews say, ‘Next Year in Jerusalem,’ that will actually be the case for the US Embassy,” he concluded.

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By Ynet