The U.S. is De-coupling Itself from Israel
The recent news from the Gaza frontlines indicate the U.S.-Israeli relations is undergoing another round of stress-test.
According to the latest reports, Israeli PM is still defiant of U.S. and international warnings regarding its ongoing offensive operation in the Southern Gaza city of Rafah where hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Gazans are stranded:
“As prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated Tuesday that Israel would proceed with a military operation in the city of Rafah “with or without a deal,” the Biden administration-which has repeatedly warned against a Rafah offensive- appears to be holding out hope for a cease-fire agreement.”
During the past few days, there has been a tiresome and unfruitful multilateral effort involving Qatar, Egypt, the U.S. to broker a lasting ceasefire deal in Gaza in exchange for the release of hostages by Hamas.
As of May 12, no plausible deal has been reached between Israel and Hamas despite many rounds of meetings and negotiations between the involved parties:
“The prospects for an agreement appeared increasingly distant Thursday as William J. Burns, the CIA director who has been Biden’s main negotiator, left Cairo without a deal. Delegations from Israel and Hamas also departed, although midlevel officials from the United States and its fellow intermediaries, Egypt and Qatar, remained in Cairo to continue discussions in hopes of salvaging the process.”
According to analysts, the unfolding situation in Gaza and the continuous friction between Biden and Netanyahu marks the “lowest point” in the history of the relations between Israel and the U.S., once believed to be unbreakable and special:
“Biden’s warning in an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett that he’d halt some weapons shipments to Israel if it invades the Gazan city of Rafah marks the most direct US attempt to rein in its ally in a national security crisis since the Reagan administration, and the first significant conditioning of American military assistance since the start of the war.
Biden’s statement of his ultimate red line takes his trial of strength with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to its most intense level yet and sent immediate shockwaves through US and Israeli politics and around the world.”
Since October 7th, there has been a notable decline in U.S.-Israeli relations
After months of extensive Israeli military campaign in Gaza, there are clear indications that the U.S. is seriously reevaluating its ‘special’ relationship with Israel.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s long-standing opposition to a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian issue has led the Biden administration to believe that Israelis will not accept the prospect of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel based on the 1967 borders. Consequently, Israel will pursue its own strategy in the Middle East, independently of the U.S. and much of the West’s approach in the war-ravaged region.
Two days ago, the Israeli PM Gilad Erdan in protest of the UN’s move to boost the standing of the Palestinian observer mission in the organization used a portable shredder while standing on the podium to tear apart the UN charter, which drew strong reactions from world leaders.
The U.S. President Biden has become increasingly vocal about the need for Israel to promptly halt its military campaign in Rafah which has been disproportionally targeting and killing Palestinian civilians, including women and children, and in a surprising move has ordered the stop to the delivery of crucial weapons and equipment to Israel.
There is even a clear recognition among pro-Israeli neocons regarding Israel becoming increasingly more of a pariah state as a result of its actions in Gaza and the broader Middle East. The ‘spending isolation of Israel’, as described by Commentary Magazine’s editor, John Podhoretz, in a recent op-ed, is an admission of the weakening of the U.S.-Israeli special relationship
“Maybe there is a certain type of rueful wisdom to be taken from these undeniable statistics. Maybe the thing is, Israel doesn’t need the support of the international community and the Council on Foreign Relations and the panel on Washington Week in Review and the jawboners at the Aspen Institute and the billionaires who drink ambrosia from the boots of tyrants at Davos. Maybe the thing is, Israel is a nation that has had this miraculous rise because it has a purpose, which is something most other countries do not have or need, and something that Thomas Friedman and his ilk are (again) too unnerved by to understand.”
There are plenty of issues that point to a historic shift in relations between the U.S. and Israel that has occurred in recent years
Decoupling from Israel has been in effect for several years now, and to many, it might come as a surprise. However, there have been several notable instances where the U.S. and the Israeli security state have been on the opposite side of issues:
From the U.S. point of view, the scrutiny highlights a growing awareness of the need to balance its relation to Israel with prioritizing its own national interests, geopolitical calculations, and human rights concerns. While not an immediate cessation of bilateral relationship, the recent episodes signal a serious shift in how the U.S. views its relationship with an increasingly illiberal Israel.
At the heart of the U.S.-Israeli widening foreign policy wedge is the direction toward which American domestic and foreign policy has moved. The recent national polls highlight the decreasing support of the American-Jewish community regarding their unflinching support of Israel.
Latest polls (here and here) by major non-partisan polling firms clearly indicate the continuing disapproval among Jewish Americans toward Israel and its military operations in Gaza:
In addition to the U.S., the global view of Israeli has taken a negative turn as well according to a recent Morning Consult study in 2024:
“net favorability percentage of people viewing Israel positively after subtracting the percentage viewing negatively-dropped globally by an average of 18.5 percentage points between September and December, decreasing in 42 out of the 43 countries polled.”
By detaching itself from the scrutiny of U.S. domestic politics, Israel seeks to have minimal constraints in terms of carrying out its own hawkish and confrontational policies. However, this does not sit well with the U.S., as many actions of its Middle Eastern ally have demonstrated significant influence over both domestic and foreign policies in the country.
By the end of the Cold War, which had brought the two nations together, the U.S. foreign policy strategy began to switch between the Global War on Terror (GWOT) — favored enthusiastically by the Israelis because it shared a common enemy in terrorism around its own borders — and democracy promotion.
The Israeli national security establishment and neoconservative intellectuals, when al-Qaida terrorists hit New York City’s iconic twin towers — essentially attacking the global hegemon on its soil — tried to ‘persuade’ U.S. foreign policy toward fighting an excruciating (and still ongoing) crusade against terrorism and armed non-state actors in the Middle East.
As both militarized democracy promotion and GWOT (Global War on Terror) proved disastrous and costed more than $5 trillion, the general direction of U.S. foreign policy began to change drastically. This change has manifested itself in two Obama administrations, one Trump administration, and the current Biden administration. All of these have one thing in common: breaking with the post-Cold War and post-9/11 strategy of endless wars and nation-building
Realizing this trend, Israel is trying to persuade their U.S. counterparts to reorient American troops and resources into the Middle East as much as it can, while encouraging the U.S. diplomatic capacity to expand and enhance the Abraham Accord to include other countries, most notably Saudi Arabia, into the fold.
The Accords, a crucial part of the regional architecture of Israel foreign policy gained rapid momentum during the Trump admin as the former president towed a staunchly pro-Israel policy unlike ever seen before in the history of the two nations.
Since 2021, the Israelis have been trying hard to encourage the Biden administration to adopt an unequivocally supportive approach toward Israeli interests, however the result has been mixed and not fully satisfactory to the country’s liking.
The Israeli expectation of the U.S. can be best reflected in how the Trump administration approached the country during its four years in the Oval Office. Essentially, it involved saying yes to all Israeli requests, including moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, ‘gifting’ a huge chunk of another sovereign nation’s territory to Israel, withdrawing the U.S. from the Iran Nuclear Deal, imposing heavy sanctions against the country, and killing its top military figures, to name a few
Since the October 7th attack and over 200 days into the war, it is becoming clearer that the U.S. is not going to treat Israel the way its predecessor did. Essentially, the previous administration gave the Middle Eastern country carte blanche, while also using all its capacities to shield Israel from global scrutiny.
In other words, The oct 7 attack marks the beginning of the weakening of US-Israeli ‘special relationship’ ,and There’s no way back.
Israel and babies don’t care and they are becoming increasingly comfortable with the status of a ‘pariah state’. For them the sooner the decoupling takes places the better. There’s no turning back the clock in the U.S. Israeli relationship.
In March 13, the Democratic party’s Senate leader, gave scathing criticism of Israeli leadership, especially Bibi Netanyahu:
“I believe Prime Minister Netanyahu has lost his way by allowing his political survival to take precedent over the best interests of Israel. He has been too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows. Israel cannot survive if it becomes a pariah.”
Today’s U.S.-Israeli problem may be narrowed down to the U.S.-Netanyahu problem, but that would be downplaying the reality of the situation. In fact, the problem extends beyond Netanyahu; it goes deeper than his authoritarianism, embrace of international populism and illiberal policies, and curruption. The U.S. decoupling from Israel is the product of years of friction between the two nations’ increasingly divergent views on geopolitical issues. The more time passes, the more it becomes self-evident.
The U.S.-Israeli decoupling is now underway.