he president of Israel is resisting calls for a unilateral strike against Iran, but it’s just the “unilateral” part that he finds troubling: “It is clear to us that we have to proceed together with America.” Even if this is just posturing, the statement shows one reason the U.S. struggles to make allies in the Arab world: Israelis and Arabs alike assume that the U.S. will take a side in Mideast conflicts, and that the U.S. will side with Israel. Are they right?
In light of the long history of lobbying (and junkets for members of Congress), is support for Israel so entrenched in American politics that the U.S. can no longer exert influence and broker peace?
The U.S. Can Still Pursue Peace
By: Aaron David Miller
Of all the urban legends and mythologies circulating about American foreign policy, none is greater (nor more destructive) than the notion that Israel and its supporters in America have a virtual lock on a president’s Middle East policies.
Defenders and critics of Israel alike seem determined willfully to misunderstand this issue. Pro-Israeli advocates maintain that American support for Israel lies in shared values alone. Domestic politics have nothing to do with it. Critics contend that sordid domestic politics is all there is.
Both are wrong. The reality is that the pro-Israeli community in America does have a powerful voice but not a veto. And a strong American president with a smart strategy and buy-in from the Arabs and Israelis can trump domestic politics every time.
Shared values are the foundation of the U.S.-Israel relationship. And millions of Americans (not just Jews and evangelicals) have supported or at least acquiesced in U.S. backing for Israel these many years. At the same time, there’s also no question that assistance levels to Israel would not be nearly as high without strong domestic lobbying in Congress.
But the farther you go from Capitol Hill, the less domestic politics matter. Three American presidents – Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush — all pursued Arab-Israeli peace initiatives, fought with the pro-Israeli community and Israeli prime ministers, and achieved breakthroughs in the negotiations because they had will, skill and most important, opportunity. All successful U.S. mediators end up having some level of tension with Israel (and the Arabs too); it’s part of the job description of any successful mediator to push both sides further than they thought they needed to go. What’s critical is that the fight be productive.
President Obama’s clash with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over settlements was not a productive fight; and it cost him a good deal of street credibility with both the Israelis and the Palestinians. Should the president be re-elected and try the peace process again, he’ll need two things he didn’t have then: a strategy to actually get to an agreement and a relationship with both an Israeli prime minister and a Palestinian leader based on some measure of trust and confidence.
As for the Iranian nuclear issue, President Obama is the “not now” president — determined to avoid military action against Iran by either the U.S. or Israel before the elections, not allowing domestic pressures to drag him into war. So much for the so-called power of the lobby.
America Has Shown Which Side Its On
By: Rashid Khalidi
Israelis know it. Palestinians know it. The whole world knows it. The absence of any American sense of fair play where Palestinian-Israeli issues are concerned is no secret. In fact, it will keep the U.S. from ever being a disinterested intermediary in the Middle East.
Administrations of both parties long ago proved the U.S. unworthy of the title of “honest broker.” This has reached the point that today blindly siding with Israel, beyond being an electoral necessity, has become almost a patriotic duty for anyone in public office. Only those who ignore reality can deny that such bias has tarnished America's reputation and undermined its interests abroad.
Republicans criticize President Obama for showing insufficient fealty to Israel. He did push for a temporary freeze on illegal Israeli settlement building, but it was incomplete (neither Jerusalem nor ongoing construction was included) and he failed to get Israel to extend it. Moreover, Obama responded to Israel’s obduracy by offering it F-35 fighter jets and other goodies. The U.S. president has since coddled Israel, extending additional military assistance and vetoing U.N. resolutions criticizing settlement activity. He also opposed the Palestinian initiative for statehood last September, delivering the most pro-Israel American speech ever at the U.N. And though it seems of no importance in Washington, the Palestinians are as far from freedom from Israeli subjugation as ever.
Meanwhile, Obama’s opponent, Mitt Romney, who held a big-money fund-raiser in Jerusalem last month, said last December that when it comes to Palestinian-Israeli policy, “I’d get on the phone to my friend Bibi Netanyahu and say: ‘Would it help if I said this? What would you like me to do?’ ”
Americans surely don’t want to subcontract our foreign policy to another state, let alone one that seems determined to egg us into a disastrous war with Iran. Yet Sheldon Adelson, a big Romney contributor and casino mogul, appears committed to just that: pushing the Romney-Ryan team toward war. For his part, Obama refrains from saying the obvious: War with Iran would not only destabilize the Middle East, but also upend America’s own fragile economy.
As politicians, skinny dipping and clothed alike, outdo themselves to embrace an ever-more-belligerent Israel this electoral season, we should recall the words of George Washington’s farewell address: “A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.”
Israel and the U.S. are Natural Allies
By: Daniel Gordis
The U.S. struggles to make allies in the Arab world because America has values. Israel shares America’s commitment to liberal democracy, but the Arab world does not. In Israel, freedom of the press is robust; in the Arab world, it hardly exists. In Israel, the law accords minorities full civil rights; in much of the Arab world, that is not the case. The strong relationship between Israel and the United States is a natural one based on shared values. If the United States is perceived as being closer to Israel than it is to the Arabs, that is to the credit of both the U.S. and Israel.
To be an honest broker in the Middle East, the U.S. need not pretend that it has no conception of right and wrong. An effective American broker would state unambiguously that what made the U.S. great in the past was its commitment to core values of freedom, democracy and opportunity, and that those same values will guide its foreign policy in the future. Because it believes in these values, the U.S. should demand that the Palestinians do what the Jews did – treasure their ancient culture while engaging the values of the West, honor the terrible losses of their past while embracing a better future.
An honest American broker would no longer ignore blatant Palestinian myopia. Just this week, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared Jerusalem a Muslim and Christian city, insisting that there will be no peace until the Jewish occupiers depart. The Jews, he said, wish to “destroy the Al Aqsa mosque and build the alleged Jewish temple.”
In Palestinian discourse, even the Temple is “alleged.” Compare that stance to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s politically risky acknowledgement of Palestinian rights to a sovereign national homeland. The peace process is utterly dead not because of America’s values, but because of the Palestinians’. Only when American presidents of both parties insist that the Palestinians take responsibility for their future will we know that America has gotten serious about playing a constructive role in the Middle East.
Obama's Fumble Cost the U.S. Its Standing
By: Michele Dunne
As talk of a unilateral Israeli military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities escalates once again, hands are wrung about declining U.S. influence in the Middle East, even over the actions of our closest ally. But is that really what is going on here?
First, Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons or a breakthrough capability — and also any U.S. or Israeli strike that might set the program back — would have broader and more immediate implications for U.S. allies in the Gulf than for Israel itself. Concern about their stability and supply of petroleum to the global market is at least as important a consideration for and constraint on the United States as is Israel. Second, the Obama administration has lost influence over Israeli actions not because of declining American power in a broad sense, but rather as a result of a specific self-inflicted wound.
Upon entering office in 2009, President Obama decided to give Israel the cold shoulder in order to repair what he thought were damaged relations with Muslim-majority countries. Embarking on a peace initiative, Obama demanded that Israel freeze settlement construction in the Palestinian territories. Knowing that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would resist, Obama should have visited the country and put his case before Israeli legislators and other citizens. But although he visited Riyadh, Cairo and Istanbul that year, he pointedly left Jerusalem off his itinerary. The rest is history: Netanyahu refused the settlement freeze, earning the plaudits not only of most Israelis but also of many in the U.S. Congress. Obama backed down, and eventually he dropped efforts at Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Thus an ill-considered effort to gain greater influence in the Middle East by distancing the United States from Israel left the president in a position in which Israelis neither love nor fear him. Arabs, to boot, are extremely disappointed in Obama and inclined not to take him seriously. If Obama wins a second term, he will have to try to rebuild his credibility in the Middle East. Meanwhile, whether or not to strike Iran, or to support Israel in doing so, is not a decision that the United States should back into simply because the Obama administration has mishandled Israel.
Obama's Promise, Broken Time and Again
By: Daoud Kuttab
In his famous Cairo speech in June 2009, President Obama expressed opposition to extremism and a commitment to democracy and economic development. He vowed to support Palestinian statehood and called for a balanced approach to the issue of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East.
Never have the words of a U.S. president raised so much hope in the Arab world and then brought so much disappointment.
Obama’s backsliding began three months after the Cairo speech. After having demanded a total Israeli settlement freeze, the U.S. president buckled under pressure from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and left the Palestinian leader hanging.
On the nuclear question, Obama told Cairo University students that “no single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons.” But it wasn’t long before the White House zoomed in on one country (Iran) with little evidence of nuclear weaponry.
Now the one Mideast country proven to have nuclear weapons is pushing the U.S. to help it in an attack that is likely to start a regional war, and the president of the most powerful country is afraid of saying “no” to Israel.
Arab Gulf leaders, certainly not friends of Shiite Iran and likely to be among its targets, are opposed to any military option against Iran.
Ever since the presidential election season began in the U.S., the White House as well as Congress (excluding a skinny dipping Republican) have been largely absent from the Middle East and the peace process. In fact, the U.S. has spent only a tiny bit of time — and no political capital — regarding the carnage falling to the people of Syria.
Obama’s promise in Cairo in 2009 that “America will align our policies with those who pursue peace” can’t be achieved if America’s words, policies and actions are being dictated (directly or indirectly) by warmongering Israeli politicians who are refusing the advice of their own military and intelligence establishment.
If the U.S. wants to retain its influence and ability to broker peace and keep the scourge of nuclear proliferation from the Middle East, American leaders must adhere to their publicly declared principles.
Obama, who was elected to end Bush’s “dumb” war on Iraq, stated in Cairo that “it's easier to start wars than to end them.” He also insisted that we should choose “the right path, not just the easy path.”
Presidential election season or not, the resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue should have the guts to take the right path and simply say no to war, no to a military attack on Iran. It would do more for peace and restoring hope and U.S. credibility than he can imagine.
An ally to Israel, but Not Unquestioning
By: Richard Land
It is true that Israel has been America’s most reliable ally in the Middle East. Support for Israel has been entrenched in the American body politic ever since President Harry S. Truman recognized the Jewish state in May 1948.
Support for Israel is particularly deep in the American Jewish community and among a significant majority of those Americans who describe themselves as “Evangelical” Christians. Evangelicals who support Israel do so from deeply held religious convictions. First, they believe God gave the Holy Land to the Jews forever, and second, they believe God has promised to bless those who bless the Jews and curse those who curse the Jews (Genesis 12:3). In other words, if they want God to bless America they believe America must bless Israel.
Yes, most Americans will “side with” Israel in its right to exist. That does not mean blind support for everything Israel does, or wants to do. Let’s remember, the first American president to officially call for a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict was George W. Bush, once described to me by an Israeli official as “the best president of the U.S. Israel has ever had.”
Also, America gives a great deal of aid to the Palestinians as well as other Arab states, not just the Israelis.
America can exert significant influence in the Middle East and may be the only “honest broker” with sufficient trust from both sides and the power to make any agreements reached enforceable.
However, the Islamists who want to erase Israel’s existence will forever find America unalterably opposed to their goal.
Some Advocates Limit the President's Options
By: Dylan J. Williams
The United States is rightly standing with Israel and most of the Western world in opposing the serious threat that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose to regional and global security, using a combination of sanctions and diplomacy to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Yet the broken politics surrounding U.S. policy regarding Israel have blinded many in Washington to the fact that exerting bold American leadership toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would also help us isolate and pressure the Iranian regime.
Some U.S. pro-Israel advocacy groups whose policy positions are now markedly to the right of most American Jews are leveraging decades of political relationships to convince policy-makers that no progress can be made on the Israeli-Palestinian front until all concerns over Iran’s nuclear program are fully resolved. The result is to tie the president’s hands, taking powerful diplomatic options off the table that could significantly enhance multilateral pressure on Iran.
In Israel, the debate is far more open and robust. Publicly criticizing their political leaders’ push for a unilateral strike against Iran, top Israeli security experts have called on their government to return to the negotiating table with the Palestinians in order to reverse Israel’s own increasing international isolation and make it easier for Arab states to work in concert with Israel against Iran’s destabilizing influence.
In addition to identifying the link between the peace process and efforts to counter Iran’s nuclear noncompliance, these senior Israeli figures were among the first to warn of the imminent demographic shift that will render Israeli Jews a minority between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Absent the establishment of a Palestinian state, this shift poses an existential threat to Israel’s Jewish character and democracy — the very foundations of the Zionist dream. In contrast, some politicians and advocacy groups in the United States have played down or denied this threat and have undermined U.S. efforts to advance a two-state resolution.
The question before pro-Israel Americans is whether we stand with Israel’s security establishment, or with those who naïvely assume that threats to Israel line up to be dealt with one at a time.
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