US and Israel: An unsettled alliance
Daniel Dombey and Tobias Buck
Conflicting views: Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left)
with US president Barack Obama in Washington last year. Their poor
personal and political relations have played a part in the rift
between their countries
The world clustered around Barack Obama yesterday – with one very
notable exception. Leaders of some 40 countries, from Argentina
and Armenia to China and India, gathered in Washington to attend
the nuclear security summit convoked by the US president. Benjamin
Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, stayed away.
Israeli diplomats attribute Mr Netanyahu’s last-minute cancellation to
Turkish and Egyptian plans to discuss Israel’s nuclear arsenal. But
his absence from an event intended to show US allies and partners
rallying around the American president’s agenda was, at the very least,
deeply symbolic.
The US-Israeli alliance, for decades the cornerstone of Middle East
power politics, is in rocky shape. The Obama administration is angry
about Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem. Mr Netanyahu’s
government is recoiling at what it depicts as Mr Obama’s unreasonable
demands.
The tension between the two sides has become a story of personal
snubs and policy differences even as the US and Israel profess their
devotion to each other. As George Mitchell, Washington’s Middle East
envoy, prepares to return to the region, US officials are considering
eventually issuing outlines of their own for an Israeli-Palestinian
deal – a turn of events Israel is desperate to avoid.
But at root, the differences stem from the two countries’ contrasting
reactions to an issue seen by both as crucial to their national
interest, and, in Israel’s case, to its national survival: Iran.
DISPUTED TERRITORIES
There are today more than 280,000 settlers living in 121 settlements
in the occupied West Bank. There are at least another 180,000 settlers
in occupied East Jerusalem. Their presence – in growing numbers – is
widely considered one of the main obstacles to a peace deal between
Israel and the Palestinians because the settlements are located on
land the Palestinians want to become part of an independent state.
Though some settlers say they are ready to leave their homes should
a peace deal ever emerge, others have vowed to fight any attempt to
evict them – even by the Israeli government.
"The principal difference between now and previous administrations
is the Iran problem," says a senior US official as he discusses the
current US-Israeli stand-off. "From our perspective, it increases
the urgency of Israel keeping the international community focused on
that problem and not on other problems. And the Israelis need all of
us to be working together on the common goal of keeping the pressure
on the Iranians to back off."
Still, as diplomats and analysts study the underlying causes of the
US-Israeli rift, there can be little doubt that the poor personal
and political chemistry between Mr Obama and Mr Netanyahu plays a part.
Their relationship is clearly much more confrontational than that
between President George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert,
the former Israeli prime ministers.
Washington officials say Mr Obama was infuriated by Israel’s
announcement of the expansion of a settlement in occupied East
Jerusalem during a fence-mending visit last month by Joe Biden, the
vice-president. Little more than a week later, Mr Netanyahu paid one
of the most ignominious visits to the White House of any major ally
in recent years – out of sight of the media, left to confer with
his team in the Roosevelt room while Mr Obama dined without him,
and exiting the building without any agreement despite two meetings
with the president in a matter of hours.
Mr Netanyahu also presides over perhaps the most rightwing coalition
in Israeli history, while Mr Obama is widely perceived as among the
most liberal presidents in decades. The Israeli leader is seen in
Washington as obstructionist, while many Israelis regard Mr Obama
as naive, inexperienced and – worst of all – the architect of a US
policy of appeasement.
Mr Obama and Mr Netanyahu share the view that Tehran must be stopped
from acquiring nuclear weapons capability, a scenario both maintain
would destabilise the wider Middle East and embolden Israel’s
most committed foes. But there is a fundamental, and increasingly
visible, rift on how best to respond. Crudely put, the Americans view
Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts as the key ingredient in building
an Arab coalition to curb Iran. Israel, by contrast, argues that a
lasting Middle East peace is only attainable once the world has dealt
with the threat from Tehran.
Speaking to more than 7,000 people at last month’s annual conference
of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), the powerful
pro-Israel lobby group, Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State,
highlighted the propaganda value of images of the occupied Palestinian
territories, calling for Israel to help change "the facts on the
ground" to "refute the claims of the rejectionists and extremists
and in so doing create the circumstances for a safe, secure future
for Israel".
She added: "Behind these terrorist organisations and their rockets,
we see the destabilising influence of Iran. Now, reaching a two-state
solution will not end all these threats . . . but failure to do so
gives the extremist foes a pretext to spread violence, instability
and hatred."
The US is also stepping up work with Arab states to contain Tehran.
But as General David Petraeus, head of US central command, said last
month: "If you go to moderate leaders in the Arab world they will
tell you that the lack of progress in the Middle East peace process
causes them problems."
Mr Netanyahu’s government treats the rise of Iran – and its nuclear
ambitions – as an issue so urgent it leaves the peace talks in the
shade. On his last trip to Washington he told members of Congress
that the Palestinians were not presently a willing partner for
peace. He also encouraged the passage of unilateral US sanctions
legislation against companies investing in Iran – despite the Obama
administration’s objections.
The White House was not happy. "The more you resort to throwing your
weight around in someone else’s backyard the less compunction they will
have about doing the same," says Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace
negotiator now at the New America Foundation think-tank in the US.
In his own speech to Aipac, the Israeli prime minister brushed aside
any suggestion that the broader conflict between the Muslim world
and the west was linked to Israel: "Militant Islam does not hate
the west because of Israel. It hates Israel because of the west –
because it sees Israel as an outpost of freedom and democracy that
prevents them from overrunning the Middle East."
EAST JERUSALEM
The quiet suburb at the centre of the dispute over Israeli settlements
Ramat Shlomo does not look like the centre of a major international
dispute, write Tobias Buck and Daniel Dombey. Sitting on a steep hill
just a short drive from downtown Jerusalem, the settlement’s quiet
streets are lined with modern buildings in cream-coloured stone. The
residents belong almost entirely to Israel’s ultra-orthodox religious
minority.
To most Israelis, it is no more than a suburb of Jerusalem. To the
rest of the world, however, it is an illegal Jewish settlement built
on occupied Palestinian land. That is why a plan, revealed last month,
to build an additional 1,600 homes there for settlers sparked a global
outcry, as well as a crisis in US-Israeli relations yet to be resolved.
Many Israelis are angry at the sudden focus of US president Barack
Obama’s administration on settlement-building in East Jerusalem. After
all, it follows years in which the US appeared to neglect the issue,
and a face-off last year in which Washington was widely perceived to
have backed down.
Along with the wider international community, every US administration
for more than 40 years has held that Israel is an occupying power in
East Jerusalem and the West Bank – the lands conquered, along with
the Gaza Strip, during the 1967 war between Israel and its neighbours.
As a result, Washington regards all Israeli settlements on these
territories as illegal. East Jerusalem, however, is particularly
sensitive: the Palestinians want it as the capital of a future
independent state; the Israeli government, in contrast, is committed
to maintaining all of the city as the "undivided capital" of the
Jewish state.
The Obama administration started with a very different stance from that
of George W.â~@~IBush, which muted its criticism of settlement-building
in the area. Last May, Hillary Clinton, secretary of state, called
for building in all occupied territories, including East Jerusalem,
to be halted. Eventually, however, she praised as "unprecedented"
a 10-month Israeli freeze that covered the West Bank alone.
Today, US officials acknowledge two errors in that confrontation,
which they say they will learn from: making explicit demands for a
formal freeze, so reducing room for manoeuvre; and failing to plan
their response to Israeli resistance to those demands. This time, Mr
Obama and Mrs Clinton are pushing for a halt in announcements about
East Jerusalem as opposed to a formal freeze. The Israeli leader,
however, under intense pressure from rightwing allies to stand up
to Washington, has yet to respond formally to the US on how he will
handle future construction plans in the contested city.
This is not a view widely shared outside Israel. "We are all saying to
Israel that if the main threat in the area is indeed Iran then they are
not on the right road for a solution," says a senior western diplomat,
stressing European and Russian support for Mr Obama’s position.
The logic sketched out by the US and its allies goes as follows:
containing Iran requires an Arab coalition; an Arab coalition requires
an Israeli-Palestinian peace process; an Israeli-Palestinian peace
process requires Israeli concessions; and the Israeli concession
required right now is a halt to new settlement building in occupied
East Jerusalem. In her Aipac speech, Mrs Clinton also argued that,
in the absence of a peace deal, demographic trends and other factors
put Israel’s long-term survival as a democratic Jewish state at risk.
"They can stick to their position of principle on East Jerusalem
but just because they can doesn’t mean they have to," the senior
US official says of the Israeli government. "And that’s what we are
suggesting, just out of their own self interest – some forbearance
there to make it possible for the Palestinians to be more forthcoming."
Israeli analysts close to the Netanyahu government see things
differently. "President Barack Obama capitalised on a minor Israeli
glitch [the announcement during Mr Biden’s visit] . . . to fabricate
a crisis in US-Israeli relations," says Efraim Inbar, the director
of the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Affairs. "This appears to
fit Obama’s overall foreign policy approach of estranging democratic
allies while appeasing anti-American dictators."
Yet to other Israelis the fighting talk of the country’s political
right masks a dangerous complacency. They note that Israel has become
even more dependent on US military and diplomatic support than in
the past.
"If you look at the threat perception in Israel, the threat is mainly
considered to be coming from Iran. But it is also quite evident that
Israel cannot deal with the Iranian threat on its own," says Shlomo
Brom, a senior analyst at Israel’s Institute for National Security
Studies and the former director of the army’s strategic planning
division.
It is a view widely shared among US analysts. Israel, they say, is
likely to need US assistance for any effective military strike on
Iran’s nuclear facilities – and to deal with the backlash certain to
follow such an attack.
Meanwhile, there is considerable discomfort in Washington about
some of Mr Netanyahu’s language on Iran, which he has likened in
the past to Nazi Germany. "I don’t think it is in America’s interest
or of anybody else who is a friend of America to encourage America
into a collision with Iran," says Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former US
national security adviser. "The issue really is how can one achieve an
outcome which is going to be good for the American national interest,
ensure Israel’s indefinite well-being and security, and some measure
of genuine justice for the Palestinians?"
Many people maintain that Israel and the US will ultimately be able
to patch up their differences and resume their traditional close
relations. Powerful forces in Washington feel uncomfortable with the
current tensions. Many conservatives view Israel as an ally unlike
any other, a fellow democracy in a sea of authoritarian states. The
administration’s stance has found opposition or only muted support on
Capitol Hill, where Aipac remains a formidable force despite increasing
divisions among Jewish-Americans themselves. Leading Republicans have
voiced sharp criticism of the tougher line on Israel.
That kind of support leads some Israelis to believe Mr Netanyahu can,
and should, defy US pressure. As Dore Gold, the president of the
Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs and a former Netanyahu adviser,
says: "The relationship between the US and Israel is not restricted to
their governments . . . The people of the US are with us and Congress
is certainly with us."
One thing is clear: even as the diplomatic tensions mount, no one in
Washington is questioning the American commitment to Israel’s security,
a pledge described by Mrs Clinton as "rock-solid, unwavering, enduring
and for ever". She boasted in her Aipac speech that Washington was
increasing the $3bn military assistance the US delivers to Israel each
year. Nor does the Obama administration see much scope in reducing
other subsidies to Israel. All the same, some officials are looking
at one possible source of pressure: eventually issuing US "parameters"
or guidelines for a peace deal.
The Obama administration is, in other words, shaping a policy
more nuanced than its predecessors’: it seeks to blend a cast-iron
commitment to Israel’s security with a much more critical stance
on settlement building and the peace process. As Iran continues
its progress towards nuclear capability, it is a distinction that
seems unlikely to disappear. For Mr Netanyahu and his government,
uncomfortable times lie ahead.