Amerika und Israel folgen dem gleichen alten Drehbuch: Trump hält die regionalen Ambitionen von Netanyahu zurück – aber er gibt ihm eine freie Hand mit den Palästinensern
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/america-and-israel-follow-same-old-script
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[SS from essay by Aluf Benn, Editor in Chief of *Haaretz*.]
In recent weeks, an air of crisis has enveloped the United States’ relationship with Israel—Washington’s closest ally and client state in the Middle East. When U.S. President Donald Trump made his first trip to the region in May, he notably bypassed Jerusalem on his way to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. The snubbing of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was coupled with dramatic twists and turns in American regional diplomacy. Against Israel’s wishes, Trump is negotiating directly with the Jewish state’s worst enemies: Iran and Hamas. His team reached out to the Yemeni Houthis, who keep firing missiles deep into Israel and continue to block its marine traffic. He even met with Syria’s ex-jihadist leader, whom he praised as “tough” and “attractive.”
To Netanyahu’s critics at home and abroad, Trump’s behavior is a breath of fresh air. For years, the Israeli leader has boasted about his close relationship with this U.S. president, arguing that their bond is a reason to keep him in power. During Trump’s first term, after all, the United States gave [Israel ](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/regions/israel)and Netanyahu almost everything they asked for. But this time, Trump is bucking the prime minister, and Netanyahu and his supporters have had only feeble excuses as to why their efforts are failing.
Well, at least Foreign Affairs is running an honest article, claims that Israel controls American foreign policy in the Middle East is largely deluded, but past that, it lacks any mention of the fact that H.W. Bush forced Israel into the Madrid talks. You know the thing that kick-started the 90s era peace process. Gets zero mention in this, same with Regan suspending agreements with Israel over the annexation of the Golan.
>> Consider the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Truman gave Israel diplomatic recognition even as the United States abided by a UN arms embargo on its various belligerents. (The fledgling IDF got its arms from Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and by smuggling excess war materiel from the United States.) When the war ended, Truman accepted the territorial and demographic results of the conflict. That meant he recognized Israel’s land gains beyond the UN Partition Plan of 1947 and accepted as fact the *nakba*—the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs, never allowed to return.
Well, yes, one side lost the war and the other side lost it with predictable consequences by the standards of the time. Not a single country for the record, has ever claimed Israel only exists in there 1947 borders to my knowledge. And said borders would have been even less defensible than the 1948 ones, ones that had been openly rejected by both the Palestinans and Arabs. And as he grudgingly admits, US foreign policy was pretty much identical to the soviet one at this time.
Where we supposed to get mad at the German expulsions and Indo-Pakistan people transfers now and try to act against them?
>> Biden’s government promised that Netanyahu and Gallant would not be arrested on U.S. territory. (The United States is not a member of the ICC.) Yet Israel never had to give Washington any meaningful quid pro quo for all this help. It was free.
I mean, how would the US gain in this case from recognizing ICC warrants against Israel, when there is/was ongoing diplomatic harassment on the subject of Afghanistan. He also avoided doing anything like sanctions, it was a pretty weak defense of Israel.
Weirdly enough, the author never bites the bullet and acknowledges the uncomfortable truth that the Palestinian issue simply does not matter much and never did. It might be a moral issue, but geopolitically it hasn’t majority mattered in decades.
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People always seem to forget that even if the United States ripped off the band aid on Israel. Israeli Policy would not change much towards Palestinians. They could just get weaponry from Russia.