Junior government and politics and history major
According to conservative politicians and commentators, the United States is careening toward a crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations. In the words of Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post’s most reliable reactionary, President Obama’s threat “to stop vetoing anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations” represents a “mission to marginalize and bully Israel.”
In a recent interview on CNN’s Face the Nation, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) implored Obama, with characteristic tact, to “get over [his] temper tantrum,” to avoid jeopardizing the United States’ long-standing ties with Israel. But are we satisfied with the diplomatic arrangement conservatives are so desperate to protect?
Support for the Israeli state — and implicitly, the current Israeli political leadership — has long been a pillar of U.S. foreign policy. Decade after decade, the United States has shielded Israel from hostile United Nations resolutions and bankrolled the country’s highly active armed forces. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent re-election — and the ugly campaign that preceded it — presents an opportunity to reassess the assumptions grounding U.S.-Israeli relations and the implications of U.S. support.
With polls showing Isaac Herzog’s left-wing Zionist Union gaining on Netanyahu’s Likud party mere days before Israeli elections, the prime minister made a critical gamble. He disavowed his commitment to a Palestinian state, suggesting that anyone who “moves to establish a Palestinian state or intends to withdraw from territory is simply yielding territory for radical Islamic terrorist attacks against Israel.”
Then on election day, Netanyahu piled on the fear-mongering, conjuring up a vast foreign conspiracy bent on ending his rule and empowering Israeli Arabs, who he warned were to turning out to vote in “swarms.”
Netanyahu’s past support for a two-state solution was unconvincing at best and grossly disingenuous at worst. His actions — particularly his hard-line negotiating tactics and support for new Jewish settlements on Palestinian land — never matched his rhetoric.
But the prime minister’s latest stunts make clear the emptiness of past promises and underscore just how low he is willing to go to appeal to reactionary segments of the Israeli electorate. The timing of his reversal was calculated to maximize political impact, and it worked: Netanyahu peeled away enough voters from the nationalist Jewish Home, a party heavily comprising Jewish settlers in the West Bank, to secure his re-election.
After the election, Netanyahu walked back his earlier statement, expressing support for a “sustainable, two-state solution” in an MSNBC interview. However, he argued that because of the possibility of ISIS or an Iranian proxy gaining a foothold in an autonomous Palestine and threatening Israel, “circumstances would have to change” for him to allow such a state to materialize.
In other words, Netanyahu continues to oppose the emergence of a Palestinian state. His actions suggests he always has and always will. The prime minister’s seesawing is dizzying, duplicitous and clearly calculated to serve his immediate self-interest. For Netanyahu, there will always be some extremist element that would threaten Israel’s security in the event of Palestinian independence.
It’s a convenient excuse. Of course, Netanyahu’s staunch support for more Israeli development in the occupied Palestinian territories, most recently seen in a June announcement of plans for new Jewish housing in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, suggests another reason for preserving the status quo.
Barring the sudden disappearance of Radical Islam from the Middle East (and the collapse of the Iranian regime), the Prime Minister can avoid taking any meaningful steps toward Palestinian independence, all the while building new settlements and shoring up support among right-wing Israelis.
Israeli policymakers understand what continued inaction on Palestine means. In 2010, then-Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned, “As long as … there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non-Jewish or non-democratic.” The perpetual disenfranchisement of “millions of Palestinians,” Barak argued, would represent “an apartheid state.”
Under Netanyahu, this is what Israel increasingly resembles — an undemocratic, neo-colonial power headed by a racist opportunist. However long-standing our ties, Americans need to ask whether this is the kind of state that deserves our support.
Charlie Bulman is a junior government and politics and history major. He can be reached at cbulmandbk@gmail.com.
