Relationship between the US and Israel and Its Effect on Other Middle Eastern Countries - Research Paper Example

? THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN UNITED S AND ISRAEL AND ITS EFFECT ON OTHER MIDDLE EASTERN COUNTRIES The relationship between the U.S. and Israel hasbeen termed “special” and the level of the relations that they have reached today has almost never been seen in any other relationship in the world’s history. It has been mostly observed in international politics that the U.S. mostly sets its objectives with the aim to protect its own national benefits in foreign policy. However, when it comes to evaluating its relationship with Israel, it is clearly understood that the U.S. doesn’t consider this approach. The position where the U.S.-Israel relationships stand today not only influences these countries but also the world politics, particularly the Middle East countries. The historical course of the two countries has reached such an angle that it has become an encumbrance not only to Israel’s adversaries but also to Israel’s allies and even to the U.S. In this section, we will appraise the history of the U.S.-Israeli relationship in six episodes of history, and how U.S. foreign policy on Israel has shifted over the decades to what it is today, and simultaneously we will also discuss the effect of the U.S.- Israel relations on the Middle Eastern countries. The liaison between Israel and the United States is one of the most unstable and contemplated relationships in world history. From the period since its establishment in 1948 to today, Israel has faced up to eight diverse American presidents, and eight different outlooks toward Israel as a state, how the U.S.-Israeli relationship should be dealt with, and the issue of Palestine and its people. The relationship between the United States and Israel in the past six decades can be segregated into two schools of thought: the “special relationship paradigm” and “national interest orientation” stated Professor Robert Lieber of Georgetown University, an expert on US-Israeli relations (2008). The United States was the first country to recognize Israel as an independent State because at the time in 1948, and until today, the U.S. Government presumes that it shares certain common values and political aims. Under the special relationship paradigm, which forms the basis of U.S. support of Israel even today, the Truman Administration sensed that Israel, like the U.S., held a revolutionary fortitude, was compiled of a diverse societal symphony, and shared its democratic ideals. The national interest orientation transpired over time and included mutual aims such as extenuating the Arab-Israeli conflict, sustaining Western access to Middle Eastern Oil, the battle against Islamic Fundamentalism, and with Israel in place, the U.S. was assured continued influence in the Middle East. Definitely, the initial support of the U.S. for Israel was not all politically motivated rather they were initiated on the basis of moral, cultural, and religious sentimental grounds stemming from the mayhem committed in Europe during the Holocaust, which resulted in the major immigration of Jews to Jerusalem and the surrounding areas in the first place (Ben-Zvi 2009). The period from 1948-1957 forms the first phase in the history of U.S.-Israeli relationship. As stated before, the United States was the first nation to give de facto recognition to the State of Israel primarily on grounds of moral obligation and geo-strategic concerns. This unambiguous assertion of support gave birth to a lifetime relationship between the two countries. However, in these starting years, the United States’ faith in Israel was low, and they were not provided any assistance in monetary or military form. The primary reason of U.S. for making Israel its ally during this period was that in the midst of the Cold War, Israel stood alone as the solitary supporter of the West and discourager of communism in the Middle East. The Truman Administration called this approach an eccentricity of the modus operandi, or method of operation, of stemming Soviet influence in the Middle East (Ben-Zvi 2009). The second occurrence of U.S.-Israeli relations, lasting from 1957 to 1967 started with development of Anti-West and Arab nationalism in the Middle East. The new Eisenhower Administration also viewed the patronage of Israel as expensive to American national interests. However, with his second term, Eisenhower’s trust in Israel developed, and after the Jordanian Crisis of 1957 and the coup d’etat against King Hussein, the U.S. became dependant on Israel to defend Western interests in the region, considering it as the only enduring Western-minded state in the Middle East. The 1958 statement of the National Security Council memorandum that the U.S. considered necessary to support Israel in order to maintain its command over the Persian Gulf oil reinforced this sentiment (Ben-Zvi 2009). By the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960, the United States’ approach toward Israel had all but made a 360-degree turn. The threat of communism was swiftly growing worldwide, so in 1962 Kennedy overruled a State Department decision not to supply major arms to Israel. He defended his pronouncement by stating that now the United States had not only their initial ideological, social, cultural, and religious reasons for supporting Israel, but because of the rogue Soviet Union there were new political grounds as well. In his words, Ben-Zvi stated, “President Kennedy identified on both a personal and political level with the young Jewish state,” which provided fuel to the pro-Israel movement in the United States and abroad. In history, during this period the United States had relatively good seize of control over weapons sales and ideological sharing with Israel, but in 1963 there came the first altercation between the two states. The Kennedy Administration demanded that Israel allow open inspection of its U.S.-supplied nuclear plant in Dimona, and this demand of Kennedy’s set a precedent that the U.S. would sell and have some angle of control of advanced weapons to Israel (Ben-Zvi 2009). The beginning years of the third phase, from 1967 until 1973 viewed major Western progress in obliterating Soviet influence in the Middle Eastern. First in the Six Day War won by Israel, and then later in the Jordanian Crisis the U.S. and Israel worked together to neutralize both conflicts. However, in 1973, the first territorial conflict concerning Israel and former Palestinian lands was seen by the U.S. (Ben-Zvi 2009). At that time, the new Egyptian president was keen to abandon his government’s loyalty to the Soviet Union provided that Israel would make territorial concessions as a unilateral withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula. When Israel steadfastly refused this offer, Egypt gave the United States an ultimatum: re-evaluate the United States’ relationship with Israel, or Egypt remains allied with the Soviet Union. By this time, the Palestinian question had already been raised and debated, and finally in 1975, the Egyptian proposal was approved on the condition that the U.S. also recognized the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) as a legitimate governing body, even though Israel did not (Tessler 1994, 352). President Jimmy Carter, who ruled during the second half of phase three, was the first American president since the establishment of relations with Israel to identify the Palestinian problem as a valid issue, and to demonstrate some compassion toward the Palestinian situation. During his presidency, he tried to persuade Israel to recognize the PLO though it refused straight forwardly. In 1977, a joint agreement on regional peace in the Middle East was prepared by Carter in which he included “ensuring the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people”. Through this proposal, Carter expected to help Israel realize that peace can solely be attained by recognizing the PLO. Unfortunately, the final resolution of Carter’s agreement failed to mention the rights of the Palestinian people due to his inability in persuading the Israeli government of their significance (Ben-Zvi 2009). There was another radical shift of attitude toward U.S.-Israeli relations during the fourth phase from 1981-1984. Israel was exploited purely strategically for military purposes during the Lebanon War by the Reagan Administration discarding all cultural, ideological, and religious emotions of the previous decades for supporting Israel. Reagan not only supported Israel’s military actions in the Lebanon war but also the Israelis in being anti-PLO (Bzostek and Robison 2008, 369). With another American president, then came another strategy on how to deal with Israel and its continued settlements in former Palestinian territories. Under George H.W. Bush, Israel saw a dimension which was until then unseen by them: inconsiderate demands on ending settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem with the warning of thwarting the monetary support from the U.S. in case his demands were not met. Unsurprisingly, this created tension between the Israeli and U.S. governments since Israel refused to impede settlements by demand of a new president thousands of miles away. As a consequence, they were not able to make apposite deal with the large post-Cold War influx of Jews from Eastern Europe (Ben-Zvi 2009). The fifth phase came about at the conclusion of the Cold War, and the United States’ policy toward Israel enclosed the idea that “four decades later … it was no longer essential to solicit the goodwill of the Arab world to promote the objective of [Soviet] containment” (Ben-Zvi 2009). The foremost focus of the U.S. now was to create peace in the unstable states in the Middle East: Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. The election of President Bill Clinton also brought about yet another 360-degree turnaround in US attitude. Clinton, unlike Bush, was an advocate of the Oslo Accords, which would lay out framework for Israel-Palestine peace. Unfortunately, despite Clinton’s soft approach of persuasion and negotiation of the Israeli government to give Palestine independence, the Palestinians continued to deny Israeli offers, wanting the State of Israel to be entirely erased off the map (Bzostek and Robison 2008, 368). The efforts of President Clinton’s approach would have born fruits had he been permitted in office for another term. His efforts were thwarted with the election of George W. Bush as President in 2000. Moreover, the attacks of September 11, 2011 shifted the attitude once again; further solidifying the relationship between Israel and the United States in their common battle against Islamic fundamentalism. Bush junior, like his father, deemed the Palestine problem as a very minor issue rather viewed Israel as a “victim state” and deployed various military operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza during his tenure. Bush’s primary motive was to fight against “terrorism” and its proliferation. On being questioned about the Palestine issue, he displayed an extremely different attitude exclaiming that an Israeli-Palestinian agreement “should reflect the current demographic realities”. This radical outlook of a supposed solution to the territorial issue contradicted every president before him since Truman, who at least gave a thought to the Palestinian predicament (Martin 2003, 1). The people of the Arab regimes whish supported the West were infuriated by the inconsiderate Israel acquisition of the West Bank and Gaza, and the incapability of the U.S. to persuade Israel to recognize Palestine as a viable state. Though the Arab world was segregated into two opposing regimes– the Ba’thist regime which was anti-U.S. and the regimes of Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf Cooperation Council who supported the U.S., both of them viewed Israel as a hostile state callously trying to repress the rights of the Palestinians by engaging in anticipated military strikes with its superior nuclear competence and unconditional U.S. military support. This special bonding of the U.S. and Israel heightened the fears of the Arab world pertaining to the ambitions of Israel, especially during periods of anxiety in the Middle East. In order to stabilize its relation with the Arab world, the U.S. had only one effectual strategy left that is, seriously promoting the Israeli-Palestinian peace motion (Martin 2003, 1-2). With the election of President Barak Obama, occurred the most important discussion point on U.S.-Israeli relations and the Palestinian question. The Washington post has referred President Obama as the most considerate president to Palestinian needs since Jimmy Carter. In his campaign speeches he has orated continued support of Israel, and although in many ways he has stayed true to his word to remain faithful to the Jewish state, he has made some poignant decisions, and steep demands to try and reconcile the Palestinian situation. As a result of these demands and his hostile relations with Benjamin Netanyahu, his true intentions for the Jewish state have been questioned. In 2011, President Obama outwardly rejected the acceptance of further Israeli developments, and claimed that only the resolution of Israeli-Palestinian conflict can resolve the rest of the problems of the Middle East. Some intense anti-Israel thinkers have even construed Obama’s attitude on Israel-Palestine as equivalent to what happened in the Holocaust, and that the only reason Israel exists today is because of the Holocaust and to serve as a pawn for the American military in the Middle East (“Editorial Post” 2012). The Obama proposal that has most pro-Israel thinkers’ up in arms states that besides entirely ending the settlements, Israel should also terminate the 1967 occupancy and return to the ’67 border lines, without asking for any concession from the Palestinians. Palestinians and their supporters celebrate Obama’s views because they see him as the American president who finally supports the Palestinian situation, and they have thus adopted President Obama’s demands as their own. Obama has also given more than a $70 million increase to the Palestinian plight since taking office. In the past two years, Obama has also openly condemned the actions of Israel on several occasions infuriating the supporters of Israel, but simultaneously gaining the confidence of some of the Arab world. According to some people, this confidence in Israel led Palestine to request statehood at the United Nations last year without conferring with the former. This movement of the Palestine fuelled the anti-Israel movement; giving an opportunity to many influential players in U.S. politics to come out in support of Obama’s strategies (“Daylight: The Story of Obama and Israel” 2012). For example, in May 2012 conservative writer William Kristol approved Obama’s standpoint saying, “That’s the kind of active diplomatic leadership I would like to see from the president of the United States.” Though Obama’s attitude is threatening his support at home, it is inspirational to watch an American leader who is determined to put an end to the Palestinian suffering (Sale 2012). The question that stands today though is: Will the relationship of the U.S. and Israel continue to exist if President Obama is successful? And how much of a loss would it be to lose Israel’s alliance? Would it be worth what the Palestinians might gain? For the moment, those questions remain unanswered as we are plunging into an election season charged with this issue and many others. On the one hand, humanitarians would see it as an evolution if the United States took harder action on Israeli treatment of Palestinians, and if Palestine were to gain statehood. However, these actions might hamper the assurance of Israel’s continued loyalty to the United States though it might gain the support of other Middle East countries. It is unfortunate that this state [Israel] created out of sympathy for its maltreated people has turn around in the last half century in an endeavor to oust another people from its lands where they’ve been for ages and ages. References Ben-Zvi, Abraham. "Israel Studies: An Anthology-The United States and Israel: 1948- 2008". Jewish Virtual Library. April 2009. Accessed on Nov. 3, 2012. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/isdf/text/benzvi.html Bzostek, Rachel and Samuel B. Robison. “U.S. Policy toward Israel, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia: An Integrated Analysis, 1981–2004”. International Studies Perspectives 9 (2008): 359–376. Daylight: The Story of Obama and Israel. Emergency Committee for Israel. March 03, 2012. Accessed on 5 Nov. 2012. http://www.committeeforisrael.com/ Editorial Board. "An unbridged divide in U.S.-Israeli relations." Washington Post. March 6, 2012. Accessed on Nov. 4, 2012. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/an- unbridged-divide-in-us-israeli-relations/2012/03/05/gIQAzB1XtR_story.html Lieber, Robert. "U.S.-Israeli Relations since 1948." Middle East Review of International Affairs, 2, no. 3 (1998). Accessed on Nov. 4, 2012. http://www.gloria-center.org/1998/09/lieber- 1998-09-02/ Martin, Lenore G. “Assessing the Impact of the U.S.-Israeli Relations on the Arab World.” Strategic Studies Institute. July 2003. www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/pub104.pdf Sale, Anna. "Israel in 2012: Kristol Praises Obama, Notes Shift in Overall Debate." It's a Free Country. May 16, 2012. Accessed on Nov. 5, 2012. http://www.wnyc.org/articles/its- free-country/2012/may/16/israel-2012-kristol-praises-obama-notes-shift-overall-debate/ Tessler, Mark A. A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Bloomington, Indiana: University of Indiana Press, 1994. http://books.google.co.in/books?id=3kbU4BIAcrQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q &f=false Read More