The crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations isn’t going away. If anything, it keeps getting worse, precisely because it has exposed and crystallized a gap between the goals, expectations and even the national interests of these old allies.
The basic relationship may still be “rock solid,” as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton put it recently, but it is being tugged in opposite directions. Maybe now is the time to take money out of the equation.
Israel will get $2.7 billion in military aid from the United States this year — or 18 percent of Israel’s military budget. By 2013, that will lock into an annual level of $3.15 billion for five years. It also has almost $4 billion outstanding in available U.S. loan guarantees, left over from $9 billion extended at former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s request in 2003.
That makes Israel the largest recipient of U.S. aid in the world, if you don’t count Iraq and Afghanistan. It also benefits from some of the easiest terms: Unlike other recipients, which must buy 100 percent American, Israel can spend about a quarter of its U.S. military aid at home, which amounts to a significant boost to its defense industry.
The problem with this kind of largesse is that it muddies the picture, both for Israel and the United States. The best thing for the relationship would be for the United States to cut Israel’s allowance.
Under that scenario, Israel could pay less heed to U.S. pressure and do what it thinks it must for its own national security. Many would argue that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is doing that anyway. The difference would be that the United States wouldn’t be there to help pay for it.
Housing blocks for Jews in east Jerusalem? Pursuit of terrorists in the Gaza Strip, even in southern Lebanon? A security fence around the whole country?
If this strategy makes Israel feel more secure, maybe it should just pursue it and not complain about “restraints” imposed by the U.S. Then Israel could start thinking seriously about what its defensible borders should look like, perhaps even question the logic and the cost of tying up its military protecting unsustainable settlements in the West Bank.
Freed from its reputation as a stalking horse for the U.S., Israel could explore deeper relations with more moderate Arab states as a counterweight to Iran.
The advantages for the U.S. are obvious: It would save money at a time when the federal debt is zooming out of sight. The sums aren’t great — a drop compared with the $1.4 trillion budget deficit in fiscal 2009 — but it would take some of the sting out of Israel’s stubborn opposition to U.S. policies.
Severing the financial links could also correct the perception that the U.S., as Israel’s patron, can’t be an honest broker in the Middle East.
That assumption, widely held in the Arab world, was put on the record by Gen. David Petraeus, head of the U.S. military’s Central Command, when he told Congress that the festering Israeli-Palestinian conflict “foments anti- American sentiment due to a perception of U.S. favoritism toward Israel.”
Similar words have been used by James Jones, the U.S. national security adviser, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The message is clear: Failure to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians isn’t just about Israel anymore. It’s about U.S. national-security interests.
Obviously, there can be no peace without Israel’s participation. But at the moment, it seems no amount of U.S. hectoring is going to sway Netanyahu and his Cabinet. If that’s their considered opinion, let them have it — and pay for it.
It wouldn’t be the first time the U.S. withheld aid from Israel. This happened several times in the 1990s, and again in 2003, when Israel built settlements in the West Bank. By law, U.S. loan guarantees can’t be used to finance settlement construction.
These sanctions had zero effect: Israel went ahead with its settlements anyway. When a new threat to withhold $1 billion in remaining loan guarantees was hinted at last January by George Mitchell, the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, Israeli Finance Minster Yuval Steinitz just shrugged and said his country doesn’t really need the money anyway.
Cutting Israel’s aid may have been a meaningless gesture in the past, but this time might be different. President Barack Obama isn’t the only one who is rapidly losing patience with Netanyahu’s insistence on stoking tensions with new building projects in east Jerusalem.
Figuring out where to cut in a way that would have political impact would be a tricky business. As a key ally in the region, Israel deserves U.S. military support, more, say, than neighboring Egypt, which gets $1.5 billion in military and economic aid, in spite of its repressive regime.
Back in 2007, when President George W. Bush pushed through a 10-year military aid agreement with Israel, Nicholas Burns, then undersecretary of state, said the U.S. considered the cumulative $30 billion in assistance to Israel “to be an investment in peace — in long-term peace.”
Now might be a good time to check the return on that investment.
Celestine Bohlen is a columnist for Bloomberg News. This piece appeared in the Jerusalem Post.
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04/09/2010 at 05:16 AM
Shamefully, Celestine Bohlen is ignorant both of Israel’s agreements regarding Jerusalem and of the history of the stepwise dissection of the State of Israel since the Balfour declaration. It is tragic enough that so many countries and peoples do not recognize the right of Israel to exist, and would shrug while it is being dismembered. But it is unfathomable that so many educated Jews do not even recognize that Jerusalem is the Capital of Israel, not a settlement. It is hard to understand why the J.editors chose Bohlen’s commentary. (For a thoughtful and educational experience, I suggest that your staff read “Saving Israel”, the most recent book of Daniel Gordis.)
It is possible that your editors are woefully lacking in facts. In the name of “balanced reporting”, did they wish to be so obscenely incendiary?
To get a sense of how the Israelis feel at the moment, please read Isi Leibler’s Jerusalem Post column of March 31. It is reproduced in part below.
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“Over the past year, Israel has made major concessions to the Palestinians with zero reciprocity. Yet the US president, who seeks to engage and appease tyrants like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Syrian President Bashar Assad, exploited a bureaucratic bungle over a building zoning permit (for which Israel immediately apologized) as a pretext to ignite a massive crisis. He publicly and repeatedly humiliated the head of the only democratic state in the Middle East .
Obama demonstrated that, far from being an honest broker, he is forsaking Israel and adopting the most extreme Palestinian demands. Obama not only demanded that Israelis be denied building in their capital, but tried to impose a prohibition on construction in the exclusively Jewish suburbs of east Jerusalem which former US administrations had unequivocally agreed would remain in Israel. Obama was effectively demanding that Netanyahu agree to a division of Jerusalem even before final status talks with the Palestinians were initiated.
Beyond that, Obama sought to intimidate Netanyahu into signing additional undertakings instantly without even consulting his cabinet. These included: indefinite extension of the settlement freeze; release of thousands of Palestinian terrorists; transfer of additional territory to Palestinian control; commitment to withdraw to the 1967 ” Auschwitz borders”; undertaking to discuss all core issues in the indirect negotiations; and easing the blockade against Hamas.”
Was it Obama’s objective to demonstrate to the Arab League meeting this week in Libya that the US could bludgeon Israel into acquiescing to whatever it demanded? If Israel acceded to these demands, that would represent the opening benchmark for further concessions that Israel would be expected to grant to the Palestinians in the course of the proximity talks. In such circumstances, the Palestinians have every incentive to reject direct negotiations while the US extracts more concessions from Israel on their behalf.
“NO US ally has been treated in such a contemptible manner by an American president. Obama even responds to representatives of rogue states like Libya ‘s Gaddafi and Venezuela ‘s Chavez more courteously. US administration press leaks to Israeli media alleging that Netanyahu froze and “panicked” were a cynical ploy to undermine his government. Yet despite the blunders committed by their government, Israelis will rally behind their leaders as they internalize the humiliation to which their prime minister was subjected.
“Beneath the hypocritical facade of concern for Israel ‘s security, Obama’s brutal anti-Israel onslaught has unleashed dark forces which will embolden the jihadists and other enemies of Israel and fuel the growing waves of anti-Israel hysteria and global anti-Semitism.
“Fortunately, the United States is a democracy whose leaders are expected to conduct foreign policies based on morality, and the majority of Americans remain overwhelmingly supportive of Israel . This was exemplified by the exceptionally warm bipartisan welcome extended to Netanyahu by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and House Republican leader John Boehner. It was reinforced by the letter urging the president to end the dispute signed by over three quarters of the members of Congress.”
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This column was originally published in the Jerusalem Post
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