I can’t fully endorse Jackson Diehl’s retelling of recent Israeli history, but I totally agree with this statement:
The front-runner for prime minister in the Israeli election scheduled for February is Binyamin Netanyahu, who aspires to indefinitely postpone Palestinian statehood — and to use military force against the Iranian nuclear program. If Netanyahu is elected, Barack Obama will be more likely to preside over a crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations than a Middle East peace.
America’s relationship with Israel is unique not only because of our close military and political ties, but because we have almost no political or media personalities willing to be publicly critical of anything Israel does. It’s somewhat understandable that the highest echelons of power (the president, his spokesmen, the State Department, relevant congressional committee chairs) are circumspect and lack candor when discussing the shortcomings of a key ally’s policies. We see the same phenomenon with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt. The distinction is that we have no shortage of minor politicians and media types who will criticize those countries when they take actions detrimental to themselves, their citizens, and our relations with them. This self-consorship regarding Israel doesn’t present a problem so long as Israel’s actions are in concert with our interests, but that has rarely been the case in the last eight years (or, broadly speaking, the last thirty years).
We have been stumbling along, tolerating an increasingly toxic status quo, for a long time. But things are deteriorating quickly. The most obvious problem is that Israel has lost the security we bought for them with the Camp David process in the late 1970’s and the peace accord in 1994 with Jordan. America brokered agreements that, when combined with serious military aid, guaranteed that Israel would never again face the threat of a land invasion like the one that occurred on Yom Kippur in 1973. But Israel squandered that gift through their refusal to vacate the occupied territories, which they claimed to need to protect themselves against a recurrence of the 1973 invasion. Instead, they undertook the Settler Program, which encouraged Israelis to illegally construct homes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip…areas that were not part of the U.N.-authorized original state of Israel.
As a result, Palestinians have, with the assistance of their Muslim-led neighbors, developed the capacity to threaten Israel’s security. The threat of suicide attacks is ever-present in Israel, but the real problem is rocket attack. Even a large scale invasion of Lebanon in 2006 failed to stop a rain of rocket attacks from that country’s southern border with Israel. And the current bombing (and possible invasion) of the Gaza strip is unlikely to stop the more rudimentary rocket attacks originating from that territory. It’s far more likely that the rockets will slowly increase in sophistication and lethality. Israel’s only sure defense against this harassment is to eliminate the incentive to attack. Their current strategy is to employ deterrence, but the international community no longer has any tolerance for the types of deadly measures needed to even approach sufficient deterrence.
The United States was the only major country or organization that failed to condemn Israel’s attacks on Gaza. The United Nations, the European Union, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, the Arab League and others all were quick to condemn Israel’s actions, even as they all called on Hamas to stop rocketing Israeli territory. Israel’s isolation is almost complete, as the world now broadly rejects their right to self-defense if that self-defense involves the use of force outside of their borders.
This means that Israel is more dependent than ever before on good relations with the United States. It also means that Israel is dependent on America maintaining its dominant position in the world and its heavy presence in the Middle East. But those are exactly the conditions most at risk as America experiences economic decline and a lack of will for maintaining the strategy of being the sole hegemon. American public opinion is another factor that is at risk of turning against Israel.
For these reasons, there could be no more self-defeating act than for Israelis to respond to these crises by electing Binyamin Netanyahu as their prime minister. Electing Netanyahu would be the equivalent of the United States reacting to the manifold failures of the Bush administration by electing Paul Wolfowitz as president. If the last eight years of neo-conservative policies have been disastrous for Israel, why vote in someone even more neo-conservative than the neo-conservatives that created the mess?
If the Obama administration finds an Israeli government that is bent on preventing a two-state solution, it will inevitably rupture U.S.-Israeli relations. Israeli voters should be clear-sighted about this. Netanyahu cannot save you. But he can destroy Israel’s relationship with their last, best friend.
