Subtle US messages fall on Netanyahu and Israel shrt

Published in Beyond Politics, a Notre Dame undergraduate journal

The Washington Quarterly, 2021

After four harmonious years of US-Israeli relations, during which the Trump administration was closely aligned with the Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the US-Israeli relationship is bound to come under strain during the next four years of Joe Biden’s presidency. Although President Biden himself has always been a strong supporter of Israel since his early days in the US Senate, his administration’s policies and preferences will almost certainly differ substantially from those favored by the Israeli government— whether it is led by Netanyahu or Naftali Bennett (who is farther to the right than Netanyahu). On the hot-button issues of Iran’s nuclear program and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is already clear that the Biden administration is trying to reverse several of the policies of its predecessor—policies that the Israeli government enthusiastically supported. President Biden wants the United States to rejoin the 2015 nuclear agreement and get Iran to fully comply with it again. To do that, he will need to lift crippling US sanctions on Iran, which will be widely viewed in Israel as a dangerous concession to Tehran. By ending the

Of all the foreign relationships of the United States, perhaps none is as closely watched and incessantly scrutinized as its relationship with Israel. Like a couple in counseling, U.S.-Israeli relations are the subject of endless analysis. Both supporters and critics are forever on the lookout for the slightest signs of tension or unease, with the former anguishing over them, and the latter celebrating. While there was little to pay attention to during the years of the Bush administration, given its tight and largely uncritical embrace of Israel, the tenure of the Obama administration has provided ample opportunities for U.S. -Israel watchers to speculate on the troubles between Washington and Benjamin Netanyahu's government. By now, the nature of this debate is entirely predictableÑon one side are those who decry President Obama's alleged failure to resolutely support Israel, 1 and on the other are those who defend the president's pro-Israeli record. 2 Both sides, however, are focusing on the wrong issue. The real debate is not over whether Obama is pro-Israel enough.

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The Obama era symbolized an unprecedented downward spiral in US–Israeli relations. In the short term, one can attribute the deterioration to the difficult, at times impossible, relationship between Obama and Netanyahu, who shared different political worldviews. Washington and Jerusalem clashed over the Israeli–Palestinian peace process and what to do with Iran’s nuclear program. However, these tensions did not appear to have had any impact on the US’s commitment to Israeli security or on its view of Israel as an important strategic ally. In the long run, however, the Obama era signals a shift in US demographics that is likely to have electoral consequences in the future. As a result, the “special” relationship may be “special” no more as changing public attitudes afford the US the freedom of political action to distance itself from, and at time even collide with, Israeli policies as Obama had done.

Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, 2009

Israeli issues make ritual reference to President George W. Bush's Rose Garden statement of June 24, 2002; it has become the scriptural source of subsequent policy declarations. In this statement, Bush made a clean break with previous U.S. policy: My vision is two states, living side by side in peace and security. There is simply no way to achieve that peace until all parties fight terror. Yet, at this critical moment, if all parties will break with the past and set out on a new path, we can overcome the darkness with the light of hope. Peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership, so that a Palestinian state can be born. I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty. If the Palestinian people actively pursue these goals, America and the rest of the world will actively support their efforts. If the Palestinian people meet these goals, they will be able to reach agreement with Israel and Egypt and Jordan on security and other arrangements for independence. And when the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and new security arrangements with their neighbors, the United States of America will support the creation of a Palestinian state whose borders and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional until resolved as part of a final settlement in the Middle East. 1 President Bush also called on Israel to withdraw to the positions held on September 28, 2000, prior to the onset of the Aqsa intifada, "as we make progress toward security," and said that Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories

At the suggestion of several wellrespected scholars who had read earlier drafts, we also posted a slightly longer and documented version of the article on the Working Paper website of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. We did this so that interested parties could see the sources and evidence on which our conclusions were based.

Middle East Policy, 2008