Since the infamous East Jerusalem settlement announcement last week and the subsequent rebukes from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the question of America's special relationship with Israel has been the question on everyone's mind. 

The Washington Post's Topic A Sunday asked a slew of policy experts whether "there is a divide between the Obama administration and the Jewish state."  Elliott Abrams, David Makovsky, Aaron David Miller, Danielle Pletka, and Hussein Agha and Robert Malley answered.  Said former State Department Arab-Israeli negotiator Aaron David Miller about the situation:

Caught up in tactics, the Obama team can't decide whether it wants to pander to the Israelis or punish them.

Israel is still a small country that feels it's living on the knife's edge. Any American who doesn't get this doesn't get very far.

Yet neither do those who aren't tough when necessary. Just ask Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter or [Jim] Baker, the only three Americans to ever produce anything in Arab-Israeli peacemaking. Each made clear that there was a cost to saying no to the superpower, and in the process they advanced American, Israeli and Arab interests. 

Last year, President Obama wasn't reassuring or tough. He called for an unrealistic comprehensive freeze on settlements, including natural growth, and then backed down when Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said no, as any Israeli leader would have.

Fighting with the Israelis needs to be worthwhile and part of a strategy to reach an Arab-Israeli agreement. Going after settlements piecemeal will fail.

Instead, if Obama is serious, he'll focus on borders first, and if he succeeds, he'll take a crack at Jerusalem and refugees. A conflict-ending agreement probably isn't possible. But after a decade of more process than peace, it's time to find out.

For Miller, the question isn't whether to stay or go, it's how to best navigate foreign policy while married to Israeli interests and actions.  In a less traditionalist direction, Middle East analysis blog The Majlis examines whether this is a relationship worth keeping.  Majlis blogger Gregg Carlstrom says Israel supporters always cite two justifications for our close ties with Israel: "Shared values and strategic interests."  Is this enough to sustain the relationship?

Carlstrom finds it difficult to qualify the first claim for its subjectivity.  What values do we mean exactly?  "Separate but equal" norms are something America overruled in the 1950s and 60s, so hopefully those are the values we share with Israel.  Perhaps it is "the only democracy in the Middle East" approach - Israel is a sound democracy, but there are plenty of fundamentalist Israelis who would like to see it overturned into a theocracy. 

If our shared values are unclear, maybe the answer lies in "strategic interests."  Carlstrom looks to our current foreign policy quagmires: Dual wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, trying to avoid a third war with Iran, navigating the Arab-Israeli conflict, and America's other relationships.

Even if Israel wanted to deploy troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, it would be disaster if they did.  Israel is such an incendiary issue in these Muslim countries that US Vice President Joe Biden cited the security ramifications of the settlement debacle last week:

In Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, Biden is quoted lambasting the Israelis for the poorly-time settlement announcement:

“This is starting to get dangerous for us,” Biden castigated his interlocutors. “What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.”  The vice president told his Israeli hosts that since many people in the Muslim world perceived a connection between Israel’s actions and US policy, any decision about construction that undermines Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem could have an impact on the personal safety of American troops fighting against Islamic terrorism.

What about Iran?  The US is "clearly worried" about Iranian nuclear proliferation, but the last thing the US wants or needs is yet another war.  Israel's swagger in regard to a military response to Iran makes the US incredibly nervous.  Israel launching a military conflict with Iran pulls the US in whether we want it or not. 

Then there is the spending power of US diplomatic currency.  With Arab states, we don't get very far.  The obvious American bias toward Israel means the US "isn't perceived as an 'honest broker'" in negotiating processes.

Finally Carlstrom looks at our other relationships, and he makes a pessimistic diagnosis:

Strong U.S.-Israeli ties clearly serve to complicate America's bilateral relationships with other governments in the region. On the other hand, there's no bilateral relationship that's aided by U.S.-Israel ties; there's no government that's more likely to cooperate with Washington because it's so supportive of Israel.

What to do about Israel and our relationship is not as interesting as the prevalence of the question.  US carte blanch support of Israel has been a foregone conclusion since America recognized Israel's statehood in 1948, but last week's actions (on both sides) and the subsequent debate demonstrate that more distance or reformative changes in this relationship are quite possibly on the horizon.

Click here to read the Washington Post article.

Click here to read the Majlis article.

Photo:  Barack Obama - Flickr

Related Posts