Why can't Israel determine its own capital?

When Mitt Romney said in his visit to Israel that Jerusalem was its capital, he was really stating what should be the obvious. But (despite a Congressional declaration years ago) the United States has refused to recognize this fact, and has put its embassy in Tel Aviv as a sop to Arab sentiment. Still, it would seem to me that openly denying that Israel has a right to put its capital wherever it chooses — a right that every other nation in the world unquestionably has — goes way too far. Yet the Obama White House has done just that: denied that Israel has the right to locate its capital in the city of its choice:

In what marks a decisive difference in the presidential campaign, one day after Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney called Jerusalem the capital of Israel, the White House asserted that Romney’s position was different from that of the Obama administration.

“Our view is that that is a different position than this administration holds. It’s the view of this administration that the capital should be determined in final status negotiations between parties,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters Monday.

In other words, Israel's choice of a capital is hostage to “final status negotiations between parties” — it cannot designate its own capital until the Arabs have deemed that negotiations have gone far enough to go into their final phase — something that seems unlikely ever to happen. How would President Obama feel if some foreign country denied that Washington was our nation's capital? Oh yes, he's not all that proud of this country anyway, so he might welcome some foreign country telling us that our capital is where they tell us it is.

Is there any doubt that Pres. Obama needs to be retired this November?