Once again, conflict is raging between Israel and the Palestinians — and once again, the US government can see fault only on one side. Even as Israeli soldiers were demolishing his compound and threatening his life, Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat was instructed by US Secretary of State Colin Powell to end terrorism against Israel, including that committed by groups Arafat cannot control. What passes in the United States as an evenhanded stance is perceived, not only in the Middle East but in Europe and throughout the world, as unquestioning American support of bully tactics by Israel. In fact, with his uncritical support of Israel, George W. Bush has managed to create an alliance of Arab states supporting Iraq against the United States. The Arab-Israeli conflict has also fueled divisions between the United States and its European allies over the war against Al-Qaeda. One can only hope that the depth of the international opposition to America’s policies may slowly force a reappraisal of US-Israel relations — for the good of both countries.
The US-Israeli relationship has gone through two phases. In the first phase, which lasted from Israel’s establishment in 1948 until the 1967 war, Washington supported or opposed Israel in light of America’s broader Middle Eastern and global strategies.
Although the Truman administration supported the creation of Israel, the Eisenhower administration opposed Israel, Britain and France when they tried to seize the Suez Canal in 1956. Following the 1967 war between Israel and its neighbors, however, most Arab states sided with the Soviet Union, and a bloc of communist and Third World countries in the United Nations routinely demonized both Israel and the United States. Israel and the United States were natural allies.
After the Berlin Wall fell, if a realistic re-examination had been permitted, it would have become clear that Israel had ceased to be as valuable a US asset. But for more than a decade, US policy toward Israel has been shaped as much by domestic politics as by grand strategy: the pro-Israel lobby is the most powerful one in Washington. This support for Israel — no matter what its policies — has given license to Israel’s hard right to employ savage means of oppression against the Palestinians, and even against their own Arab citizens. While it is rarely noted in the American media, Israel has now occupied Palestinian lands for 35 years, denying 3 million people rights, and ruling over them with brutality. It would seem difficult to make a humanitarian case for unqualified support for such policies.
Is it time for a third era in US-Israel relations? While America should continue to guarantee the survival of Israel inside internationally recognized borders, it is time to acknowledge that the interests of Israel do not always coincide with those of the United States, any more than do the interests of other American allies like Britain or Japan.
Since decolonization after World War II, the most fundamental norm — more fundamental even than human rights — has been the principle of national self-determination, which holds that no substantial cultural community should be ruled, against its will, by foreigners. Practical considerations do not allow every nation to have its own nation-state.
Nevertheless, national self-determination is the norm that justified the independence of both the United States and Israel from the British Empire — and which today justifies the independence of the Palestinians from Israel. Needless to say, when a sovereign Palestinian state joins the society of nations, it must agree to renounce revolutionary tactics and abide by the norms of international law and diplomacy, as the United States did in 1776 and Israel did in 1948.
In formulating a new Middle Eastern strategy based on enlightened self-interest, Americans can be guided by principles as old as the American republic. In 1793 President Washington issued a proclamation of US neutrality between France and Britain, who were at war.
An influential pro-French party argued that France and the United States shared common republican and liberal ideals, and looked back with nostalgia at the Franco-American alliance during the American Revolution. But Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the Treasury and the greatest foreign-policy thinker among the Founding Fathers, argued that “an individual may, on numerous occasions, meritoriously indulge the emotions of generosity or benevolence, not only without an eye to, but even at the expense of, his own interest. But a government can rarely, if at all, be justifiable in pursuing a similar course.” Hamilton warned that we Americans should be careful not to “overrate foreign friendships, and to be upon our guard against foreign attachments ... Foreign influence is truly the Grecian horse to a republic.” According to Hamilton, foreign influence is “most dangerous when it comes under the patronage of our passions, under the auspices of national prejudice and partiality.” Two centuries later, this counsel to the American people could not be more relevant.
(Lind, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, is the former executive editor of The National Interest and a former senior editor of The New Republic.)
