During and immediately after the Gulf War, U. When Israel dramatically increased its repression in the occupied territories—including incursions into autonomous Palestinian territories provided in treaties guaranteed by the U. The correlation is clear: the stronger and more willing to cooperate with U.
Therefore, the continued high levels of U. Indeed, leaders of both American political parties have called not for the U. Since the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, there has again been some internal debate regarding how far the United States should back Israeli policies, now under the control of right-wing political leader Ariel Sharon.
Some of the more right-wing elements, such as Paul Wolfowitz of the Defense Department, have been arguing that Sharon was an indispensable ally in the war against terrorism and that the Palestinian resistance was essentially part of an international terrorist conspiracy against democratic societies.
If seen to be in the strategic interests of the United States, Washington is quite willing to support the most flagrant violation of international law and human rights by its allies and block the United Nations or any other party from challenging it.
No ethnic lobby or ideological affinity is necessary to motivate policymakers to do otherwise. As long as the amoral imperatives of realpolitik remain unchallenged, U. Some of the worst cases of U. In these cases, grass roots movements supportive of peace and justice grew to a point where liberal members of Congress, in the media and elsewhere, joined in the call to stop U. In other cases, such as U. The case of Israel and Palestine is different, however. There are significant sectors of the population that question U.
Indeed, many of the same liberal Democrats in Congress who supported progressive movements on other foreign policy issues agree with President George W.
Bush—or, in some cases, are even further to the right—on the issue of Israel and Palestine. Therefore, while the perceived strategic imperative is at the root of U. These include the following:. While U. Despite these obstacles, the need to challenge U. Not only has it led to enormous suffering among the Palestinians and other Arabs, ultimately it hurts the long-term interests of both Israel and the United States, as increasingly militant and extremist elements arise out of the Arab and Islamic world in reaction.
Ultimately, there is no contradiction between support for Israel and support for Palestine, for Israeli security and Palestinian rights are not mutually exclusive but mutually dependent on each other.
This is the challenge for those who take seriously such basic values as freedom, democracy, and the rule of law. In the past, it was also possible to argue Israel was a valuable strategic asset for the United States, though its value was often overstated. Israel also provided useful intelligence on occasion. The Cold War has been over for 30 years, however, and unconditional support for Israel today creates more problems for Washington than it solves.
Israel could do nothing to help the United States in its two wars against Iraq; indeed, the United States had to send Patriot missiles to Israel during the first Gulf War to protect it from Iraqi Scud attacks. Even if Israel deserves credit for destroying a nascent Syrian nuclear reactor in or helping develop the Stuxnet virus that temporarily damaged some Iranian centrifuges, its strategic value is far less than it was during the Cold War. Moreover, the United States does not have to provide Israel with unconditional support to reap benefits such as these.
Meanwhile, the costs of the special relationship keep rising. Critics of U. The real costs of the special relationship are political. As we have seen over the past week, unconditional support for Israel makes it much harder for the United States to claim the moral high ground on the world stage. President Donald Trump. For this reason, U. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the U. Unsurprisingly, China was quick to slam the U.
Yet here the United States is again, embroiled in a crisis largely of its own making that demands its attention and takes valuable time away from dealing with climate change, China, the pandemic, Afghan disengagement, economic recovery, and a host of more weighty problems.
If the United States had a normal relationship with Israel, it would get the attention it deserved but not more. Third, unqualified support for Israel complicates other aspects of U. Middle East diplomacy.
The desire to protect Israel also forces the United States into relations with other Middle Eastern governments that make little strategic or moral sense.
Fourth, decades of unconditional support for Israel helped create the danger the United States has faced from terrorism. Osama bin Laden and other key al Qaeda figures were crystal clear on this point: The combination of steadfast U. Israel did not dream up this cockamamie idea—pro-Israel neoconservatives in the United States deserve that dubious honor—and some Israeli leaders opposed the idea at first and wanted the George W.
Bush administration to focus on Iran instead. But once U. President George W. Barak and Peres wrote arguments or appeared on U. Although surveys showed American Jews tended to be less supportive of the war than the public as a whole, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other organizations in the Israel lobby threw their weight behind the war party as well.
The special relationship—and the familiar mantra that the U. Assistant Secretary of Defense Chas W. Freeman was initially picked to head the National Intelligence Council in —or it can force nominees into demeaning acts of contrition and self-denial. The recent case of Colin Kahl , whose nomination as defense undersecretary for policy barely won Senate confirmation despite his impeccable credentials , is another example of this problem, to say nothing of the many well-qualified individuals who are never even considered for appointment because transition teams do not wish to invite controversy.
It's hard to know where one driver of America's Israel policy ends and another begins. For instance: early in his administration, President Obama pushed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to halt settlement growth in the West Bank; Netanyahu resisted this in part by rallying his allies in Congress. Netanyahu's allies in both parties, who are always eager to appear pro-Israel, pressured Obama to drop his anti-settlements push, which he did.
The question here is whether, in this case and others, US foreign policy interests or US domestic politics was ultimately more consequential to driving the US-Israel relationship.
For example, w ould Obama have pushed harder against settlements had Netanyahu not been able to call up so many allies in Congress? Were those members of Congress primarily driven by pure domestic politics, which do favor pro-Israel policies, by an earnest concern that Obama's approach was bad for Israelis, or by a belief that Obama was hurting US foreign policy interests?
In thinking about the future of US-Israel relations, it's much more helpful to examine what might cause these broad-bush factors to change.
In simpler terms: is there a scenario under which the US and Israel drift apart? Barnett, the George Washington University scholar, sees Israel's continued occupation of the West Bank as the greatest threat to the relationship. Israel's prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, tried to fight it, but the Bush administration stood firm. Shamir lost, both in Congress and with the executive, because the Israeli position wasn't consistent with the US vision of a Western, democratic Israel.
Beinart argues that Israel's ongoing occupation of the West Bank is already alienating younger and more secular Jews, and that AIPAC and other mainstream Jewish organizations risk losing their broad base of support unless they become more willing to criticize Israel on these points. Barnett's conclusion only follows if you think "shared values" are the linchpin of US-Israel relations. Maybe the US would still think it's strategically useful to support Israel.
Maybe Israel remains popular among certain Christians and the broader public regardless of its Palestinian policy. Maybe Israel comes to an agreement with the Palestinians and Barnett's point becomes moot.
For now, though, there's little evidence that American support for Israel is fundamentally breaking down — whether you think that's a good or bad thing. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding. Financial contributions from our readers are a critical part of supporting our resource-intensive work and help us keep our journalism free for all.
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