The important relationship between the United States and Israel is evolving in unpredictable ways. Their recent tensions are important for what they reveal about a more sophisticated and integrated American view of its Middle East policies, one which balances a firm commitment to Israel’s security against the problems Washington suffers from its excessive pro-Israel tilt and the continued Zionist colonialism in occupied Arab lands.
The most significant recent development is the qualitative rather than procedural nature of Washington’s criticism of Israel. This is reflected in two ways. First, top American officials repeatedly and publicly accused Israel of insulting the United States and hindering its foreign policy objectives in the Arab world and in South Asia. Israel has shifted from being merely an actor that carries out actions that are “unhelpful” to peacemaking, to the actor whose policies are damaging American strategic interests. This is the diplomatic equivalent of playing hardball.
Israeli policies have gone beyond a personal affront or embarrassment to American officials and are causing the US real pain beyond the Arab-Israeli arena. This is something new, and therefore Washington is reacting with unusually strong, public and repeated criticisms of Israel’s settlement policies and its general peace-negotiating posture. At the same time the Obama administration repeats it ironclad commitment to Israel’s basic security within its 1967 borders, suggesting that its support for Israel does not extend beyond that to include Israel’s expansion of colonization.
Second, the American military has openly criticized Israel, saying (as the commander of US Central Command, General David Petraeus, told Congress last week) that Israeli policies and the regional perceptions of Washington’s pro-Israel bias make it difficult for the US to achieve its foreign policy goals through military or diplomatic activity. The top military leadership speaking out in public with such clarity is about as serious as it gets in terms of credible criticisms in Washington.
These unusual American criticisms take place amidst a wider process of diplomatic condemnation of Israel in the past week by the European Union, the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, and the Quartet (including the US, the EU, the UN and Russia). This is also unusual and possibly significant if it goes beyond the usual rhetorical wrist-slapping without substantive policy or punitive moves.
The third intriguing new element is the changing political environment in the United States – again for two reasons: The first is that the traditional operating system of pro-Israel lobby groups is changing to some extent. No longer do groups like AIPAC, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and other such bastions of pro-Israel zealotry operate in a near-monopolistic situation, where their views on how the US should conduct its Middle East policies tended to define those policies. Other groups that speak for more reasonable Jewish sentiments in the US, like the more centrist J-Street, now have some impact. Combined with this is the fact that the whole “pro-Israel lobby” phenomenon is now openly debated in the US, reversing the situation in which such groups liked to operate in the shadows, without any public discussion of their methods, aims or impact.
The other important domestic change was President Barack Obama’s victory in passing health care legislation a few days ago. He is now in a much stronger political position at home, and less vulnerable to the sort of electoral blackmail and intellectual intimidation that are the hallmarks of some pro-Israel groups in the US. How Obama uses his political assets remains to be seen, given that the mid-term elections next November may again constrain any serious discussion of Middle East policy.
The last important point to keep in mind is that the US now seems to have clarified that which it did not reveal earlier: how it would react to the initial rebuffs it received from both Israelis (on freezing all settlements) and Arabs (on making gestures of normalization to Israel) when it launched its peacemaking mediation effort a year ago. Now the US seems to be pushing ahead with phase two of its diplomacy, in the form of direct, high-level engagement in the Palestinian-Israeli “proximity talks” being launched.
As I had anticipated during the past year, Obama would not push more vigorously on the Arab-Israel front until he dealt with his more pressing priorities, including stabilizing the US economy, passing health reform legislation, and moving ahead on Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. He has made more progress on domestic rather than foreign fronts, but has also made sufficient progress to be able to focus more sharply on Arab-Israeli issues.
We remain, however, in the same place we were a year ago in not knowing what the Obama team will actually do – beyond the more robust rhetoric and symbolic gestures – to promote a negotiated Arab-Israeli peace and protect its strategic national interests in the region.
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