America and Israel: A Special Relationship
“As Nahum Goldmann… observed, America has not only the right but the duty to put pressure on Israel.” The relevance of this statement has been questioned among many politicians. How reliant Israel is upon the United States is a question many pose themselves when analysing the American Foreign Policy agenda.
Is Israel, then, an American asset or liability?
Some, such as Jonathan Jacoby, executive vice president of the Israel Policy Forum, would claim that “Israel clearly is an asset or strategic ally in the area of counterterrorism…” while others would oppose the idea of Israel being an American asset, claiming that Israel is a liability. It is important to understand what role that the United States plays in the Middle East, especially Israel, and why the United States decides to make certain decisions such as protecting Israel againt iminent threats.
One theory is that Israel would not mind being the 51st State of the United States, and for this reason they can easily be influenced by American Policymakers, such as America’s opposition to the idea of a “Greater Israel”, or the seeking of an American recognized war in 1967 after America “grounded” Israel in the 1956 Sinai War. There are many examples that support this theory of interdependence. One of them being that Israel is both an asset and a liability to the United States.
The first proof comes from the U.S.’s role of peace mediator in the Israeli- Palestine issue. So many accords have been organized by the United States as a means of trying to resolve the conflict. One example comes from the Oslo Accord of 1993, which asked for the PA’s autonomy as equivalent to sovereignty, giving Palestine a new body for negotiating and representing Palestine, while most other points such as refugee status or Israeli settlements in the Gaza strip and West Bank have not been touched upon.
What the PLO has mostly sought since the declaration of Israel in 1948 has been the ability for Arab-Israeli war refugees to be able to return to Palestine. The 2000 Camp David Summit was also a failure, moreover for the same reasons. Israel continued keep the Palestinian Refugee topic off from the agenda as well as well as the withdrawal from occupied territories after the 1967 war. The only option Palestine had was to walk away from the negotiations and frown upon the American and Israeli’s neglect of the 242 United Nations Resolution proposed by the British.
The Clinton Plan, however, was based on the 242 UN Resolution, but instead - and once again - Yasser Arafat rejected the offer and turned to terrorism: resulting in the al-Aqsa intifada, which searched a forced withdrawal of the Jewish population from the territories conquered after the war. When questioned about their perpetual denial of the various accords, Palestine has answered that there were unequal definitions of words such as West Bank and Refugee status: claiming that 91% of the West Bank for the Israelis translated into merely 86% of that same territory for the Palestinians due to Israel’s omission of No Man’s Land region near Latrun.
Since Palestine has been stuck in this negotiating game for a long time, and instead of reaching a consensus with Israel – many times – decided to resort to terrorism, why doesn’t the United States intervene to improve Palestine’s position in Israel if the Zionist state is an American liability as well as an asset? Many would confirm that this is due to American Politics protecting their interests at home.
Eric Albert
You better do your homework. So far an F in history, and Below zero in logic and morality.