A Relationship on the Rocks: The United States and Israel Since 1948

Adrienne Jacobs

American Foreign Policy
Dr. Dua
May 2012

The relationship between the United States is one of the most turbulent and debated relationships in world history. Throughout the ages, since its establishment in 1948, Israel has been confronted with eight different American presidents, and eight varying attitudes toward Israel as a state, how the US-Israeli relationship should be dealt with, and the question of Palestine and its people. In this piece, we will review the history of the US-Israeli relationship in six episodes of history, and how US foreign policy on Israel has shifted over the decades to what it is today, and we will then discuss the prospect for Israel, Israel-Palestine, and US-Israel relations in the coming presidential term.
Professor Robert Lieber of Georgetown University, and expert on US-Israeli relations asserts that the relationship between the United States and Israel in the past six decades can be separated into two schools of thought: the “special relationship paradigm,” and “national interest orientation.” The United States chose to be the first to recognize the State of Israel because at the time in 1948, and until today, the US Government believed that it shares certain common values and political aims. Under the special relationship paradigm, which still serves today as the basis of US support of Israel, the Truman Administration felt that Israel, like the US, held a pioneering spirit, was composed of a heterogeneous social composition, and shared its democratic values. The national interest orientation emerged over time and included shared goals such as mitigating the Arab-Israeli conflict, maintaining Western access to Middle Eastern Oil, the fight against Islamic Fundamentalism, and with Israel in place, the US was guaranteed maintained influence in the Middle East. Of course, the United States’ initial support of Israel was not all politically motivated. In fact, many of the initial sentiments were of moral, cultural, and religious premises stemming from the atrocities committed in Europe during the Holocaust, which caused the major immigration of Jews to Jerusalem and the surrounding areas in the first place.
The first phase of the history of US-Israeli relationship take place in the years from 1948 until 1957. As stated before, the United States, for reasons of moral obligation and geo-strategic considerations was the first nation to give de facto recognition to the State of Israel. This unequivocal declaration of support established a lifetime relationship between the two countries. However, in these beginning years, the United States’ trust of Israel was low, and they were not given aid in monetary or military form. At this time, the United States’ major reason for holding Israel as an ally is because in the midst of the Cold War, Israel stood alone as the sole supporter of the West and discourager of communism in the Middle East. The Truman Administration called this approach an aberration of the modus operandi, or method of operation, of stemming Soviet influence in the Middle East.
The second episode of US-Israeli relations, lasting from 1957 to 1967 begins with growing Anti-West and Arab nationalism in the Middle East, and the new Eisenhower Administration saw the backing of Israel as costly to American national interests. However, with his second term, Eisenhower begins to gain more faith in Israel, and after the Jordanian Crisis of 1957 and the coup d’état against King Hussein, the US became dependant on Israel to defend Western interests in the region, seeing as it was the sole lasting Western-minded state in the Middle East. In 1958, a National Security Council memorandum stating that the US needed to support Israel to keep control of Persian Gulf oil bolstered this sentiment.
By the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960, the United States’ attitude toward Israel had all but made a 360-degree turn. The threat of communism was rapidly growing globally, so in 1962 Kennedy overruled a State Department decision not to supply major arms to Israel. He justified his decision by stating that now the United States had not only their initial ideological, social, cultural, and religious reasons for support of Israel, but now due to the rogue Soviet Union, there was now political grounds as well. In his piece, Ben-Zvi states, “President Kennedy identified on both a personal and political level with the young Jewish state,” which gave fuel to the pro-Israel movement in the United States and abroad. At this point in history, the United States had a rather good grasp of control over weapons sales and ideological sharing with Israel, but in 1963 there came the first confrontation between the two states. The Kennedy Administration demanded that Israel make public for inspection its US-supplied nuclear plant in Dimona, and this demand of Kennedy’s set a precedent that the US would sell and have some angle of control of advanced weapons to Israel.
The early years of phase three, from 1967 until 1973 saw major Western progress in Middle East in the area of wiping out Soviet influence. First in the Six Day War won by Israel, and then later in the Jordanian Crisis the US and Israel worked together to neutralize both conflicts. However, in 1973, the US saw the first territorial conflict concerning Israel and former Palestinian lands. At that time, the new Egyptian president was willing to abandon his government’s loyalty to the Soviet Union under the condition that Israel would make territorial concessions as a unilateral withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula. When Israel staunchly refused this offer, Egypt gave the United States an ultimatum: reassess 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 granted on the condition that the US also recognized the Palestinian Liberation Organization as a legitimate governing body, even though Israel did not.
The second half of phase three was the presidential term of Jimmy Carter, who was the first American president since the beginning of relations with Israel to recognize the Palestinian question as a valid issue, and to show some sympathy toward the Palestinian situation. He spent his term as president to try and persuade Israel to recognize the PLO, which it out rightly refused. In 1977, Carter formulated a joint agreement on regional peace in the Middle East, and this document included “ensuring the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people”. Carter hoped that this proposal would help Israel realize that there would not be peace without the recognition of the PLO. Unfortunately, the final resolution of Carter’s agreement did not mention the rights of the Palestinian people because he was unable to convince the Israeli government of their importance.
Phase four, from 1981 to 1991 saw another radical shift of attitude toward US-Israeli relations. The Reagan Administration used Israel purely strategically for military purposes during the Lebanon War, and all cultural, ideological, and religious sentiment of the last decades for supporting Israel had all but gone. Reagan supported Israel’s military actions in the Lebanon war, and was with the Israelis in being anti-PLO. With another American president, then came another strategy on how to deal with Israel and its continued settlements in former Palestinian territories. George H.W. Bush took on an attitude until then unseen by the Israelis: harsh demands on ending settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and saying that if his demands weren’t met, monetary support from the US would be stymied. This naturally created tension between the Israeli and US governments because Israel was not about to stop settlements by demand of a new president thousands of miles away. Because Israel refused Bush’s demands, they were not able to appropriate deal with the large post-Cold War influx of Jews from Eastern Europe.
The fifth phase came about at the end of the Cold War, and the United States’ policy toward Israel surrounded 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.” The major focus of the US 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 turnabout in US mindset. Clinton, unlike Bush, was a proponent 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 completely wiped off the map.
President Clinton’s methods may have worked had he been allowed one more term in office. However, in 2000 George W. Bush was elected, and especially after the attacks of September 11, 2011, attitude shifted yet again, and the bond between Israel and the United States was yet again solidified in the fight against Islamic fundamentalism. Bush junior, like his father, did not consider the Palestine issue of grave importance, but instead saw Israel as a “victim state” and deployed numerous military operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza during his term. Bush’s term was about fighting “terrorism” and the spread of it, and when asked about the Palestine question, he took an enormously different stance saying that an Israeli-Palestinian agreement “should reflect the current demographic realities”. This drastic view of a supposed solution to the territorial issue contradicted every president before him since Truman who even gave a thought to the Palestinian quandary.
The major discussion point on US-Israeli relations and the Palestinian question have happened in the last presidential term of Barak Obama. President Obama has been referred to by the Washington Post as the most sympathetic president to Palestinian needs since Jimmy Carter. His campaign speeches preached of 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. These demands, and his relationship with Benjamin Netanyhu have called into question his true intentions for the Jewish state. In 2011, President Obama outwardly stated that he would no longer accept further Israeli developments, and that if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be resolved, so can the rest of the problems of the Middle East. Some extreme anti-Israel thinkers even go as far as to interpret Obama’s stance on Israel-Palestine as equivalent to what happened in the Holocaust, and that the only reason Israel exists today is as a result as the Holocaust and to be a pawn for the American military in the Middle East.
The Obama proposition that has most pro-Israel thinkers up in arms states that Israel should not only completely end settlements, but also put an end to the 1967 occupancy and return to the ’67 border lines, without any request of compromise 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. On numerous occasions, Obama has also openly criticized actions of Israel in the past two years, which has infuriated supporters of Israel, but gained the confidence of some of the Arab world. All of this confidence in Israel, some say, led Palestine to seek statehood at the United Nations last year without consulting with Israel. If nothing else, Palestine’s bid at statehood put gas on the fire of anti-Israel movement, and many influential players in US politics came out in support of Obama’s tactics. For example, earlier this month, conservative writer William Kristol acknowledged Obama’s stance saying, “that’s the kind of active diplomatic leadership I would like to see from the president of the United States.” While Obama’s stance may threaten his support at home, it is at the same time refreshing to see an American leader who intends to put an end to the Palestinian suffering. The question that stands today though is: will the relationship of the US and Israel survive 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 thrust into an election season charged with this issue and many others. On the one hand, humanitarians would see it as progress if the United States were to take harder action on Israeli treatment of Palestinians, and if Palestine were to gain statehood. However, if these things were to happen, there is no guarantee of Israel’s continued loyalty to the United States. It is unfortunate that this state created out of empathy for its persecuted people has turn around in the last half century in an attempt to oust another people from its lands where they’ve been for ages and ages.

Works Cited
Lieber, Robert, "U.S.-Israeli Relations Since 1948," Middle East Review of International Affairs, 2, no. 3 (1998), http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/1998/issue3/jv2n3a2.html (accessed May 18, 2012).

Tessler, Mark A., A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, (Bloomington, Indiana: University of Indiana Press, 1994)http://books.google.de/books?id=3kbU4BIAcrQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=history of the israel palestine conflict&hl=en&sa=X&ei=GzG2T5_NBMzptQa1_Zz7Bw&redir_esc=y

Ben-Zvi, Abraham, "Israel Studies: An Anthology The United States and Israel: 1948-2008," Jewish Virtual Library, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/isdf/text/benzvi.html (accessed May 18, 2012).

Editorial Board, First. "An unbridged divide in U.S.-Israeli relations." Washington Post, March 6, 2012. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/an-unbridged-divide-in-us-israeli-relations/2012/03/05/gIQAzB1XtR_story.html (accessed May 18, 2012).

EmergCmteForIsrael., "Daylight: The Story of Obama and Israel," Barack Obama ran for president as a pro-Israel candidate -- but his record tells a different story., March 03, 2012, VHS, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wbH5KVPrPo.

Sale, Anna. "Israel in 2012: Kristol Praises Obama, Notes Shift in Overall Debate."
It's a Free Country, May 16, 2012. http://www.wnyc.org/articles/its-free-country/2012/may/16/israel-2012-kristol-praises-obama-notes-shift-overall-debate/ (accessed May 18, 2012).

--------------------------------------------
[ 1 ]. Abraham Ben-Zvi, "Israel Studies: An Anthology The United States and Israel: 1948-2008," Jewish Virtual Library, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/isdf/text/benzvi.html (accessed May 18, 2012).
[ 2 ]. Ben-Zvi
[ 3 ]. Ben-Zvi
[ 4 ]. Ben-Zvi
[ 5 ]. Ben-Zvi
[ 6 ]. Tessler, 352
[ 7 ]. Ben-Zvi
[ 8 ]. Ben-Zvi
[ 9 ]. Ben-Zvi
[ 10 ]. Ben-Zvi
[ 11 ]. Ben-Zvi
[ 12 ]. Ben-Zvi
[ 13 ]. Ben-Zvi
[ 14 ]. Ben-Zvi
[ 15 ]. Editorial Board, First. "An unbridged divide in U.S.-Israeli relations." Washington Post, March 6, 2012. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/an-unbridged-divide-in-us-israeli-relations/2012/03/05/gIQAzB1XtR_story.html (accessed May 18, 2012).
[ 16 ]. EmergCmteForIsrael., "Daylight: The Story of Obama and Israel," Barack Obama ran for president as a pro-Israel candidate -- but his record tells a different story., March 03, 2012, VHS, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wbH5KVPrPo.
[ 17 ]. Daylight video
[ 18 ]. Daylight video
[ 19 ]. Sale, Anna. "Israel in 2012: Kristol Praises Obama, Notes Shift in Overall Debate." It's a Free Country, May 16, 2012. http://www.wnyc.org/articles/its-free-country/2012/may/16/israel-2012-kristol-praises-obama-notes-shift-overall-debate/ (accessed May 18, 2012).