Should the United States distance itself from Israel to become a neutral negotiator?
According to a Wall Street Journal article, the Trump administration’s recent “moves have been seen as favoring Israel by Europeans, the Palestinians and their supporters.”
Lost in the discussion is whether America’s national security interests would be best served as a neutral intermediary, or, as Nikki Haley recently said, “There’s nothing wrong with showing favoritism towards an ally.”
Is Israel a strategically vital ally?
Back in 201, the Washington Institute’s Robert Blackwill and Walter Slocombe said, “There is no other Middle East country whose definition of national interests is so closely aligned with that of the United States.” Today those interests include reigning in Iranian expansionism and its quest for weapons of mass destruction, while combating both radical Sunni and Shiite Islamist terrorism.
The State Department, over the years, has been reluctant to “take sides” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, arguing that this would have negative effects for America’s other interests in the region.
However, it seems this has not advanced American interests or brought peace to the region. It has magnified Palestinian intransigence, while draining American taxpayer dollars, propping up a corrupt Palestinian Authority without demanding anything substantial of it.
Beyond shared democratic western values, does Israel advance American interests?
In the 21st century, intelligence and cyber-defense are paramount for security. For the United States, there is no better source of reliable information in the Middle East than Israel. The Israelis live in this bad neighborhood and understand the realities better than those on the outside.
It was Israel that discovered the North Korean-built Syrian nuclear reactor and destroyed it. Can you imagine the threat to American security if there were loose nukes in today’s Syria? Who would control them – ISIS, Bashar al-Assad, Hezbollah, or Iran? These days, do we want our military in the region to be dependent on Turkey’s President Erdogan?
Today the United States has a reliable naval port in Haifa, joint military exercises preparing its soldiers, American troops manning the X-band anti-missile system in Israel to protect Europe, Israeli security technology for U.S. homeland security, and Israel’s advances in drone technology to benefit our military.
It should be clear to all that the present Palestinian leadership is incapable of making the hard but essential choices for real peace, a demilitarized state, ending the claim of a “right of return” of descendants of Palestinians refugees to Israel, accepting a Jewish State, and signing a final end-of-conflict agreement.
The Palestinians disengaged from meaningful negotiations years ago. President Abbas used the opportunity of Trump’s Jerusalem announcement to end America’s primary role in mediating the conflict, moving it to the more friendly confines of an internationalized mediation. Abbas knows full well that the Europeans are his best ally and advocate, with the deck stacked against Israel.
As retired Israeli Brig. Gen. Michael Herzog wrote in World Affairs, Abbas “was afraid of the U.S. peace plan coming his way, felt he would have to reject it – while Israel may say yes – and didn’t want to navigate that situation.”
Pro-Palestinian Americans, such as Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, have encouraged the Palestinian leadership to distance itself from America; Khalidi called the United States the “eternally dishonest broker” in an op-ed in The Nation. A binational state controlled by Palestinians, where Israel now stands, would be an unreliable American strategic partner and would cripple American security in the Levant.
Far too many American secretaries of State have wanted to be the one to be the hero to cut the Gordian knot, to do something about the Arab-Israeli situation, so they have pressured Israel to make major concessions. American administrations have pressured Israel repeatedly because it is the one party in the conflict that is susceptible to pressure.
Unacknowledged by the realist school of thought advocated by Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Israel over the years has taken profound risks to accommodate American interests to its own detriment. President George W. Bush’s demand for Palestinian elections in 2006, against Israeli advice, directly led to Hamas’ takeover of Gaza. Bush’s father demanded that Israel break its own strategic doctrine by not responding to the Iraqi Scud attack during the Gulf War.
If a Western-style peace settlement is beyond possible in the shifting sands of the Islamic Middle East, what, then, will advance American security interests? The problem is that our interests have moved way beyond the conflict over the past decade, with our primary security problem being Iranian hegemony and its alignment with anti-American allies and proxies – Russia, Syria, Hezbollah and Turkey’s Erdogan.
So, how can America and Israel move forward without a Palestinian partner? The best, but still unlikely, possibility is encouraging the Sunni Arab Gulf states to start dealing with Israel as an equal and legitimate nation in the open, forcing the Palestinians to make more reasonable demands. The idea of treating these two belligerents evenly is morally obtuse, but treating them fairly according to our interests is appropriate.
Yes, American foreign policy interests would be advanced if there is resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but not at the expense of endangering the security interests of its indispensable ally Israel – security interests that are vital to combating Iranian, Turkish and Russian expansionism. You need only to look at Turkey, the eastern flank of NATO, to know how important Israel has become to American long-term security interests in the region.
Favoring Israel is an American national security interest. It lets our other allies know that America sticks with its longtime friends, and warns our adversaries not to underestimate American loyalty.
Eric R. Mandel is director of the Middle East Political and Information Network (MEPIN™). He regularly briefs members of Congress on the Middle East.
I agree with both of the above.
However, only Israel is to blame.
Post 1967, the Israeli objection to the de jure application of the Fourth Geneva Convention to J&S did not preclude it from de facto applying certain humanitarian provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Further, Israel’s acceptance of the application of the Hague regulations to J&S creates a potential contradiction, as the application of the Hague Regulations of 1907 seems clearly dependent, according to Article 43, on “the authority of the legitimate power having in fact passed into the hands of the occupant.”
Israel should have annexed J&S legally, decided which (if any) remaining Arabs could have citizenship/voting rights & residency and dealt harshly with the rest (e.g. expelled them).
Continued talk of peace with the “Palestinians” or Two-States is ridiculous banter and only leads to more pressure from outside. Such talk (including any reason for keeping the land other than that the land is ours) should be terminated.
@ Hugo Schmidt-Fischer:
I fully agree with your analysis of Israeli dependency on US. However, US started to pay attention when it found out that Israel had been able to collect soviet military material during the 6 day war. Up till that point, US couldn’t have cared less about Israel.
There is a big mistake in this premise that the US is favoring Israel.
Every time the Arabs and Europeans demand the US be more ‘fairhanded’, what they are actually saying is that the US should be more against Israel.
Israel is not treated fairly, not when the Geneva Convention is applied on its territories, even when this has no place in law. It is not fair to disregard Israel’s sovereignty on the Land of Israel, it is not fair to restrict its right to self-defense in war, not fair to boycott Israeli products, to demand endless concessions from Israel, to deny it access to world organizations, for Israeli sportsmen to suffer exclusions from events, etc. etc. All that is not fair.
There is this canard, that the US favors Israel. Not true. Admittedly, the US discriminates Israel a bit less than other countries. But unlike other OECD members, Israelis must provide Visa for the US, the US allowed for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons within 15 years, the US has generously funded UN organizations, including UNWRA and other bodies hostile to Israel.
Importantly, Israel’s Arab enemies, receive ample grants and subsidies from the US, way beyond anything Israel every got. In addition, the US assists many Arab armies with advanced weaponry by a wide multiple above anything Israel has ever purchased.
In spite of Truman recognizing the State of Israel within 12 or 112 minutes, he imposed an embargo on arms shipments. Israel won its first crucial wars with Russian, French armaments and other decommissioned junk.
Only when Israel won the Six Day War, did the US recognize its value. It then provided a very limited extent of armaments to the Jewish state, much less than to its enemies. Whenever it wanted, the US now was able to pull on a leash and demand Israel constrain itself. That is the value of Israel to the US. The ability to tell Arab friends, only we can blow the whistle and hold them back. That is what Israel’s enemies mean when they say the US should be more ‘even handed’. The US should control Israel even more, until it cannot defend itself at all.
And do not kid yourself. The AIPAC circus is a sham, for consumption of gullible American and Israeli Jews. That lobby is overshadowed by a vast machinery of well-oiled by petrodollars. The American establishment enjoys the perks offered by a revolving door from government posts to lucrative positions beyond anything you can ever dream to earn in a lifetime. If not for the evangelical movement, maybe if not for the relentless commitment of one man, Pastor Hagee, the little sympathy the US does award from time to time, would also go missing.