Senator Obama, in his speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said, “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.” The next day, an unnamed adviser tried to “clarify” the statement to suggest it left room for Palestinian sovereignty.

On Sunday in a CNN interview, Fareed Zakaria questioned Mr. Obama about his AIPAC speech supporting Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel. Mr. Zakaria asked him, “why not support the Clinton plan, which envisions a divided Jerusalem.”

Mr. Obama responded, “the truth is that this was an example where we had some poor phrasing in the speech” and a reminder of the need to be “careful in terms of our syntax.” He said his point had been “simply” that “we don’t want barbed wire running through Jerusalem, similar to the way it was prior to the ’67 war. … I think the Clinton formulation provides a starting point for discussions between the parties.”

Mr. Obama’s new endorsement of the Clinton plan as the “starting point” for negotiations involves much more than a problem in phrasing. He has converted his commitment at AIPAC to an “undivided” Jerusalem into support for the city’s redivision.

There are at least three reasons why one can conclude that Mr. Obama’s turn-around on his position on an “undivided” Jerusalem did not result from “poor phrasing” or careless “syntax” or confusion about a “code word.” First, the unambiguous commitment in his AIPAC speech — “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided” — came at the end of a paragraph beginning “Let me be clear.” The speech was an important address to a crucial group, intended to convey solidarity on an issue of central concern to the group — which undoubtedly accounted for the thunderous standing ovation it received. It was neither an off-the-cuff remark nor a minor part of the speech.

Second, it was not the first time he said it. In January, the American Jewish Committee distributed to all presidential candidates an Election Questionaire and posted the responses on its Web site, without editing them. One of the questions was “How do you see the likely final status of Jerusalem?” Mr. Obama’s answer was “Jerusalem will remain Israel’s capital, and no one should want or expect it to be re-divided.” The answer was as unambiguous as the one he gave 7,000 people at AIPAC five months later.

Third, he addressed the issue in 2000 in a position paper on Israel as part of his unsuccessful congressional campaign that year. In that paper, he stated, “Jerusalem should remain united and should be recognized as Israel’s capital.”

When he appeared before AIPAC in June and said “Let me be clear … [Jerusalem] must remain undivided,” Mr. Obama was expressing a view he had formally taken, in writing, on at least two prior occasions, over an eight-year period.

His 2000 position paper is particularly important, because the status of Jerusalem was very much an issue around that time. In March 1999, the Israeli Foreign Ministry posted a lengthy position paper on “The Status of Jerusalem.” The paper recounted the Jewish claim to Jerusalem extending through 3,000 years of history, noted the city historically had been united prior to the Arab attack in 1948, that the city was reunited in 1967 after another unprovoked Arab attack during the Six-Day War, and that Israel had protected the rights and freedoms of all faiths in the city ever since then. The paper concluded there was a “national consensus” on Israel’s sovereignty of a united city.

In September 2000, a furor erupted over remarks by U.S. Ambassador Martin Indyk during a ceremony in Jerusalem, where he asserted there was “no other solution but to share the Holy City.” The New York Sun’s Ira Stoll, at that time the North American editor of the Jerusalem Post, wrote in opinionjournal.com that there was “a recognition across the Israeli political spectrum that a ‘shared Jerusalem’ is another way of saying a divided Jerusalem.” The Jerusalem Post quoted a prominent Knesset member saying the remarks could only be interpreted as a call for “repartitioning” the city. The mayor of Jerusalem, Ehud Olmert, summarily rejected the ambassador’s comments.

In other words, as of 2000, there was no ambiguity about the meaning of an “undivided Jerusalem.” The only “code words” floating around were a “shared Jerusalem,” and everyone knew those words related to divided sovereignty over the city that had been united since 1967.

Mr. Obama’s Sunday interview raises questions about his candor, because his explanation of “poor phrasing” and careless “syntax” seems — at the very least — misleading, given his consistent prior articulations of his position and the definition of “united.”

But his comments raise an even more important issue. The Clinton Parameters were in fact a partition plan, a last-gasp attempt in December 2000 to bridge the Israeli and Palestinian positions in the final month of the Clinton presidency. President Clinton informed the parties that the parameters were his personal ideas, and if not accepted would be “off the table,” and go with him when he left office.

Whatever Mr. Obama meant before, what he clearly means now, with his support for the Clinton plan, is the re-division of the city.

Mr. Richman edits “Jewish Current Issues.”