THE ETERNAL ALLY

Explaining the Special Status of Israel

in US Foreign Policy
Variously characterized as passionate attachment1, strategic alliance and
stranglehold2, disagreements are numerous and frequently rancorous as to
the rationale and degree of reciprocity in the special relationship between the
worlds only superpower and her foremost protge. It will be interesting to
consider whether Israel has been marked out as Americas eternal ally 3 and
to examine whether Americas foremost bilateral relationship, cemented by
the largest cumulative grant of US foreign aid to any nation since World War
II4, can be explained in terms of a purely rational pursuit of the eternal and
perpetual interestsError: Reference source not found of the United States.

ORIGINS OF THE SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP

It is axiomatic that the primary purpose of foreign policy is to advance the
national interest and, naturally, supporters of Israel routinely assert that the
bond with the United States is based on shared vital strategic interests.
Since the earliest days of its struggle for statehood, the strategy of the
Zionist movement has been to enlist the support of the great power of the
day, and understandably so. President Truman was eager that America
should be the first nation to recognize the nascent Israeli state in 1948; a
move said to be wildly popular throughout the United States, but also to
have divided and even threatened to wreck the Administration. 5 The
6
Cabinet , the Departments of State and War and even Trumans hand-picked
Wise Men of foreign policy7 saw little strategic benefit in aligning the US with
the tiny Jewish state against her oil-wealthy Arab neighbours. So what might
account for Trumans position, which ran counter to almost all advice and
seemed directly at odds with American interests?
If all politics is local, then one might also argue that international politics is to
a great extent domestic, particularly in an election year. By 1948, American
Zionists had succeeded in putting Jewish issues on the electoral agenda by
enticing both political parties to compete for the Jewish vote. Truman was
1
The Passionate Attachment, George W Ball
2
Thomas (2007, 2)
3
Borrowing from Lord Palmerston: Therefore I say that it is a narrow policy to
suppose that this country or that is to be marked out as the eternal ally or the
perpetual enemy of England. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual
enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty
to follow.
4
$106 billion to 2009, Sharp (2009)
5
Clifford (1991,3)
6
Clark Clifford was said to be the only Cabinet member who agreed with Trumans
decision.
7
Ibid. 4: Dean Acheson, Charles Bohlen, Averell Harriman, George F Kennan,
Robert A Lovett and John J McCloy.
Colette Austin -1- April 2010
 advised not only that Dewey, the Republican challenger, intended to come
out strongly on pro-Jewish issues, but also that the Jewish vote in New York
would be crucial in November. 8 According to Clark Clifford, White House
Special Counsel, public opinion in support of the Jewish state was decisive,
because it permitted Truman, who emotionally supported the Jewish cause in
Palestine, to recognise Israel.9
Trumans personal sympathy with the Jewish claim to a homeland was clearly
relevant. After all, foreign policy in the US and elsewhere is conducted by
men and women who are flesh and bones, who have likes and dislikes, 10
with the result that foreign policy decisions are not just based on single-
minded pursuit of the national interest, but are shaped by moral, ideological,
cultural, religious and even personal affinities. Indeed all of these
motivations come sharply into focus at one time or another during the course
of relations between Washington and Jerusalem. Trumans own impulse to
recognize Israel was underpinned by revulsion at the Holocaust, a sense of
moral culpability for apparent American indifference to the plight of European
Jewry and a literal interpretation of the Bible that purportedly legitimized the
Jewish claim to Palestine. Henry Kissinger, ever the realist, later warned that
American support for Israel could not be secured in the long term by an
appeal to the emotional sentiment of US decision-makers, but only by
predicating it on American strategic interests. Nevertheless, this combination
of motivations foreshadowed the complex influences that would mould the
attitudes of successive US Presidents towards the state of Israel.

FIRST AMONG ALLIES

During six decades of statehood, Israel has attained a unique standing
among Americas allies and orchestrated an unparalleled surge in material
and political support. Since the early 1970s, US aid to Israel has averaged
over $2.5 billion per year, dwarfing aid to any other country,11 and is set to
stabilize at more than $3 billion annually by 2012. Two-thirds of these
receipts-in-aid have taken the form of military assistance, enabling Israel not
just to maintain a qualitative military edge over her neighbours, but also to
build a sizeable domestic defence industry so that Israel now ranks among
the top ten arms exporters worldwide12.
In addition to a seemingly inexhaustible flow of material aid, successive US
administrations have provided virtually unflinching diplomatic support for
Israel throughout her short but controversial history. When support from the
White House has occasionally been only lukewarm, the Israeli government
and Israels friends in Washington have deftly galvanised congressional
8
Shlaim (2000,19)
9
Stephens (2006,19)
10
To quote Peter Tarnoff, Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs during the first
Clinton administration, in a lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, on
4/2/2002, in the excellent series Issues in Foreign Policy after 911, posted at
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/courses.php?semesterid=14.
11
Supplanted only by Iraq in 2004
12
Sharp (2009,1)
Colette Austin -2- April 2010
 support to ensure that displays of presidential petulance have generally been
short-lived and limited in effect.13 The United States has only rarely swum
with the tide of world opinion in censuring Israels periodically extreme
behaviour.14

STRATEGIC ASSET OR LIABILITY?

Israels strategic importance is attributed to her role as a Cold War buttress
against Soviet influence in the Middle East, and more recently as a counter to
Islamist terrorism. During the Cold War, the US-Israel alliance was premised
on the perceived threat to US oil access posed by Soviet hegemonic
aspirations in the Middle East. However, during the early years of the Cold
War, recognizing that Arab cooperation was at least as important to Soviet
containment, US aid to Israel remained relatively modest and Presidents
Truman and Eisenhower resisted Israeli expansionism,15 kept Israel at a
diplomatic arms length,16 brushed aside continued requests for formal
security guarantees and declined to become Israels main military supplier.
While Kennedy established warmer relations with Israel (and Egypt), and
even supplied small quantities of conventional arms to persuade Israel to
abandon her nuclear programme, it was Johnson who tilted firmly towards
Israel, abandoning Kennedys overtures to the Arab nationalists, consolidating
the special relationship with Israel and setting the tone for ever-closer
political and military alignment. America quickly superseded France as chief
arms supplier (despite State Department opposition) and Israel increasingly
acted as a US-proxy to destabilise Soviet client states in the Middle East.
Decisive victory in the Six-Day War in 1967 established Israel as regional
military power and credible US ally. As Soviet military advisers and materiel
poured into Egypt during the long War of Attrition which followed, Israels
dependence on US arms and her susceptibility to US political pressure
increased, but also her strategic importance to the US. Israels strategic

13
By 1965, the Israel lobby had penetrated the US political system to such an extent
that Johnson felt he could not be assured of Senate support in ratifying an arms
sale to Jordan without first eliciting Israeli government approval. Also, see later
reference to the Letter of 76 in 1975. In 1968, a beleaguered Johnson
succumbed to Congressional pressure, coordinated by the Lobby, to sell Phantom
fighter jets to Israel. In 1981, newly-elected President Reagan would took on PM
Begin, the Lobby and Congress and made the proposed AWACS sale to Saudi
Arabia in 1981 a test of his personal authority, which he only narrowly won, but
paid a price in political capital. The following year, Congress voted to increase aid
to Israel over Reagans heated objections.
14
Mearsheimer & Walt (2007,40) Between 1972 and 2006, the US exercised its veto
42 times over UN Security Council Resolutions critical of Israel, more than half all
American vetoes during this period and more than the combined total of vetoes
cast by all other Security Council members.
15
Truman compelled the Israeli military to retreat and leave Gaza in Egyptian hands
during the 1948 War of Independence and a furious Eisenhower forced
unconditional Israeli withdrawal from Sinai and Gaza during the Suez Crisis in
1956.
16
The US lobbied strongly against Israels 1957 request for close association with
NATO (not membership).
Colette Austin -3- April 2010
 value peaked during the Jordan crisis, in Black September of 1970, when
President Nixon asked Israel to stand ready to move against Syrian forces
invading Jordan. Militarily mired in Southeast Asia, for the first time America
appeared to need Israel to defend her position in the Middle East, and Israel
earned an enormous debt of gratitude from the American President for her
readiness to oblige. In the event, Jordan was able to force a Syrian
withdrawal and Israeli collaboration was not required; even so, the US-Israeli
relationship was elevated to virtually institutional status.17
Throughout the Cold War, the American preoccupation with Soviet
machinations in the Middle East produced a confluence of her strategic
interests with those of Israel and Israel undoubtedly played a useful role, not
least in terms of shared intelligence. Israels role in destabilising Soviet client
states and perpetuating a standoff in the Middle East, may have served to
avert more direct and potentially cataclysmic confrontation between the
superpowers, or it may have made such confrontation more likely on
occasion.18 In any event, as a small state, Israel had the luxury of
disregarding the regional and global implications of her actions and of
focussing narrowly on her own vital interests. On occasions where Israels
perception of her interests diverged from those of the US, Israel repeatedly
tested the commitment of her patron almost to breaking point.
From the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, despite inducements to desist from
three successive US Presidents who feared nuclear proliferation in an
unstable region, Israel developed a nuclear weapons facility at Dimona.
Israeli operatives mounted false flag operations against American targets in
Egypt in 195419, in an attempt to undermine Western confidence in Egypts
new military regime, and the Israeli military attacked the US surveillance
vessel Liberty off the Sinai coast during the Six-Day War, perhaps to draw the
US into Israels war against Egypt, perhaps to conceal Israels conduct of the
war or her designs on the Syrian Golan, captured a couple of days later. In
any event, Johnsons advisors, including Secretary of State Dean Rusk, urged
a tough stance with Israel and were at a loss to explain the Presidents
forbearance in the face of this unprovoked attack. Interestingly, and perhaps
not unconnected, during and after the Six-Day war, and in the run-up to the
1968 Presidential election, American public sympathy for Israel stood at 55
per cent,20 while Johnsons personal approval rating was scarcely more than
25 per cent.21

17
Stephens (2007,160)
18
Premier Brezhnev threatened to intervene unless Nixon could secure Israeli
compliance with the UN ceasefire and prevent a rout of the Egyptian Third Army in
1973. US forces were moved to alert status on DefCon 3, signalling US readiness
to go to war with the Soviet Union to defend Israel.
19
Israeli operatives planted incendiary devices at US Information Agency libraries in
Alexandria and Cairo, as well as a post office and a British theatre, and planted
evidence to suggest that Egypt was responsible, in order to undermine confidence
in the Egyptian regime. Israel referred to this incident as the Mishap.
20
Stephens (2006,115)
21
Egan (2007,9)
Colette Austin -4- April 2010
 Washingtons transparency and cooperation in dealings with Jerusalem were
not always reciprocated and Israel often displayed a frustrating proclivity for
secrecy and unilateralism. 22 Israel failed to consult President Reagan, one of
the most pro-Israel of all White House occupants, before bombing the Iraqi
nuclear reactor at Osiraq and annexing the already-occupied Golan Heights in
1981, and shocked Washington again the following year when an operation
ostensibly to drive the PLO beyond artillery range of the Israel-Lebanon
border revealed itself to be a grand-scale invasion culminating in the siege of
Beirut;23 an offensive which inspired rare UN unanimity in censure of Israel.
Israels complicity with the CIA and the very highest echelons of the NSC in
covert operations, which gave rise to the controversial Iran-Contra debacle in
1986, called the Presidents personal integrity into very public question and
cast a long shadow over Reagans second term in office.
As the Soviet threat dwindled and the Cold War came to a close, the strategic
asset explanation for this unwavering alliance became increasingly difficult to
sustain and Israel had to propose a new logic to justify her elevated status as
geopolitical asset to Washington and to guarantee the continued flow of aid.
With the help of neoconservative thinkers in Washington, Israel was deftly
recast as Americas staunchest ally in a new clash between East and West.
Yet US-support for Israel has strained US relations with friendly Arab
governments, inflamed wider Muslim opinion and contributed to what Telhami
calls a demand side to terrorism.24 The greatest present-day threats to
Americas security and Middle East interests arguably emanate from radical
states such as Iran, as well as from non-state actors moving between fragile,
unstable states such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan and post-invasion Iraq.
Increased demand for radical activism has mobilized Islamist extremist
suppliers in these unstable states, jeopardizing US security with disastrous
results.25
The supposed War on Terror may have produced a sense of shared
victimhood and the impression that Israel and the US share a mutual
enemy,26 but the results of Israels much-vaunted collaboration with the US
are difficult to detect, beyond shared intelligence. Indeed, polls suggest that
Americas enemies tend to regard themselves as such largely because they
resent her unstinting political and military support for Israel.27
22
For example, in planning the first Gulf War (1990-91), the invasion of Afghanistan
(2001) and Iraq (2003)
23
Shlaim (2000,175-9)
24
Telhami (2004,14-5)
25
The 1998 US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. the attack on the
USS Cole in 2000, and the two World Trade Centre attacks in 1993 and 2001.
26
It is often claimed that Israels enemies are Americas enemies but Hamas and
Hezbollah do not ordinarily direct terrorism against the US (other than in response
to direct US military involvement in Lebanon in the early 1980s). Their campaign
against Israel is largely a response to Israels refusal to recognise the national and
individual rights of Palestinians in the occupied territories.
27
In surveys commissioned in 2001 and 2002 in five Arab states, two-thirds of
respondents ranked the Palestinian as most or very important issue facing the
Arab world today. Two-thirds based their attitudes to the US on this issue and said
Colette Austin -5- April 2010
 These days, when the US contemplates the use of force against hostile
regimes in the Middle East, Israels role as strategic asset has been usurped
by US-friendly Arab states, while Israel appears to have become a strategic
liability. Israel could not have participated in Americas two Gulf wars without
rupturing the fragile US-led coalitions. When Saddam Hussein offered to
withdraw from Kuwait, contingent upon Israeli withdrawal from the occupied
territories, he achieved two things: first, he introduced the concept of
linkage into the Middle East diplomatic lexicon; 28 secondly, he showed up
the Israeli occupation to be a diplomatic liability for the US and an
impediment to American policy goals. What is more, to persuade Israel to
stay on the sidelines in 1991 and to exercise restraint in the face of Iraqi Scud
missile attacks, the US was obliged to divert military personnel and materiel
to defend Israeli cities.
American support for Israel is sometimes characterized as insurance against
unilateral Israeli action, yet Israel has only rarely felt obliged to toe the
American line when the interests of patron and client diverge. As Moshe
Dayan once candidly observed, Our American friends offer us money, arms
and advice. We take the money, we take the arms, and we decline the
advice.29
The dynamics and determinants of US-Israeli relations are no doubt complex
and countless, and while even profoundly asymmetrical inter-state
relationships may feature reciprocity30, this important element has not always
been apparent in the course of this partnership. Other states are deemed
more important to US interests31 but are treated less special than Israel,
which suggests that the underlying rationale for the special relationship
between America and Israel transcends the bounds of realpolitik and must be
found elsewhere.

THE MORAL CASE

For many Americans, support for Israel is more than a geopolitical strategy; it
is a moral imperative. Henry Kissinger explained: America, to be itself,
needs a sense of identity and collaboration with other nations who share its
values.32 Americans have been encouraged to identify with Israel not only
as the only fellow democracy in the Middle East, but also as a fellow nation of
immigrants and pioneers who displaced hostile aboriginals to settle and
develop frontier lands in the name of progress and civilisation.
Americans feel that the Jewish people have a right to their own state as a
safe haven from persecution and, before the Holocaust, preferred that safe

their frustrations with the US would be significantly reduced or completely

removed if the US were to honestly broker a just and lasting Israeli-Palestinian
peace.
28
Shlaim (2000,474) repeated almost verbatim by Stephens (2007, 217)
29
Shlaim (2000,316)
30
Stephens (2006,6)
31
Stephens (2006,4) Germany, France, Britain, China, Japan, Russia and Mexico were
ranked higher in importance to US interests in a State Department Study of 1992.
32
Ibid. 82
Colette Austin -6- April 2010
 haven to be outside the United States. Since the Second World War, Israel
has occupied a particular place in American consciousness, not just because
of the role the US played in her creation, but also due to a shared sense of
guilt for Americas apparent indifference to the plight of fugitives from the
Holocaust.33
The memory of persecution moved to centre stage after the Israeli wars of
1967 and 1973, as the Holocaust bestowed a moral clarity that came to be
for the Israeli cause what Israel was said to be for the United States a
strategic asset.34 The proliferating memorialization of the Holocaust in the
US, which Norman Finkelstein calls the Holocaust Industry,35 served not only
to underpin Israels moral claim to the occupied territories and divert
attention away from unpalatable aspects of Israeli policy, but also to de-
legitimize criticism, deflect pressure to conform with a growing inventory of
UN resolutions, and secure continued aid.36

THE DEMOGRAPHIC DIMENSION

Jews constitute less than two per cent of the US population, 37 but this statistic
belies the weight of the American Jewish vote. American Jewry compensates
for its lack of numbers not just by being highly politicised in the 1960s and
70s Jews turned out to vote at almost double the rate of gentiles in the US38
but also by being fortuitously concentrated in key electoral states such as
New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Florida, and California, and in crucial
zones within these states.39 The significance of the American-Jewish vote is
further amplified by well-organized support for the state of Israel, which
increases the tendency to vote as a bloc for sympathetic candidates.
Remarkably, Jewish Members of Congress account for 8.4% of the total
membership (including 13% of the Senate);40 five times the proportion of Jews
in the US.

33
Draconian US immigration laws prescribing national-origin quotas were not
amended until 1965 and the US did little to pressure Britain to relax the 1939
White Paper restrictions on Jewish immigration into Palestine.
34
Stephens (2006,150)
35
In his eponymous book, first published in 2001.
36
Stephens (2006,150-60)
37
CIA world Factbook, 2007 estimate of Jewish population is 1.7% of total
population, down from a peak of 4% during the 1930s, according to Stephens
(2006,98)
38
Ibid. 37
39
Stephens (2006,37) 90% of Jews in New York State live in New York City, 70% of
Jews in Pennsylvania live in Philadelphia and 68% in Massachusetts live in Boston.
40
Interestingly, the Pew Forum website states that just over 13% of the Senate is
Jewish, which is difficult to fathom!
Colette Austin -7- April 2010
A LEVIATHAN AMONG LOBBIES41
In 1965, studies of American-Jewish identity showed that, while American
Jews were concerned about Israels welfare, supporting Israel was ranked low
in the list of factors defining American Jewishness, far behind living a moral
and ethical life.42 Since then, Jewish identity has become increasingly
intertwined with Israel and the Holocaust. Israeli wars galvanised American-
Jewish support to such an extent that historically liberal Jewish voters
permitted the most strident advocates of Israel43 to step forward and serve as
their spokesmen. Most American Jews are non-Orthodox or progressive
liberals who favour a negotiated peace and the recognition of Palestinian
rights. Yet the powerful pro-Israel lobby has come to be controlled by
Revisionist Zionists who promote Likud-led policies advocating the retention
and settlement of greater Israel,44 and who exert a disproportionate
influence on US foreign policy.
Since the Likud began courting American Christian fundamentalist churches
in 1978,45 right-wing Evangelicals, who number at least 40 million and rising,
and whose support for Israel is even less contingent upon the behaviour of
the Israeli government of the day, have far outstripped Jewish voters in terms
of electoral influence in support of Israel. Strikingly, one-quarter of the
American electorate, the so-called veto group, is prepared to use their vote
to punish politicians who undermine US-Israel relations.46 President Carter, a
relative unknown on Jewish issues in 1976, attracted 70 per cent of the Jewish
vote, but after four years of what was perceived to be less than full-throated
support for Israel, that figure fell below 50 per cent.
The American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC), ranked the second
most powerful lobby in Washington by Members of Congress,47 purportedly
speaks for the majority of organized American Jewry but sees its role, not as
one of measuring and reflecting their views, but as one of educating and of
enforcing discipline on public discourse. Congress has a considerable
measure of control over foreign policy expenditure in terms of material aid
and arms sales; it is also highly politically responsive to interest group
pressure. Former Senator William J Fulbright, a long-serving Chairman of the

41
A term coined by Geoffrey Goldberg of the New Yorker, and quoted by Profs
Mearsheimer and Walt in a debate on the pro-Israel lobby in Washington, hosted by
the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
42
Thomas (2007,30-1)
43
Orthodox Zionists, secular nationalist Zionists and neoconservatives.
44
Eretz Israel: the whole of the Biblical land of Israel, including the West Bank,
Gaza Strip and Golan.
45
whose commitment to Israel stems from a literal interpretation of the Bible
according to which the restoration of a State of Israel is a prerequisite of the
Second Coming of Christ.
46
Thomas (2007,29)
47
In a 1997 Fortune magazine poll. AIPAC was ranked behind the American
Association of Retired People (AARP) but ahead of heavyweights such as the AFL-
CIO and the NRA.
Colette Austin -8- April 2010
 Senate Foreign Relations Committee48 believed that the pro-Israel lobby
could just about tell the President what to do when it comes to Israel. He
considered its influence in Congress both pervasive and profoundly harmful. 49
Members of Congress are said to respond to the lobby for reasons not
always related either to personal conviction or careful reflection on the
national interest,50 but to the knowledge that personal sanctions will be
applied to any who fail to deliver. The delivery rate is impressive: during the
early 1970s, for example, support for pro-Israel measures averaged over 80
per cent in both houses.51
One of the most striking examples of AIPACs clout in Congress is the so-
called Letter of 76. In 1975, frustrated with Israeli intransigence on the
question of withdrawal from Sinai, Henry Kissinger and President Ford
suspended military aid in the pipeline to Israel. Within days, AIPAC obtained
the signatures of 76 senators on a letter urging the President to stand firm
with Israel. Israeli officials were reportedly buoyed by this show of
congressional support to the extent that they felt able to ignore repeated US
requests for negotiating proposals regarding Sinai.52 Despite the outward
appearance of overwhelming Senate support, Members53 described having
been beaten over the head with this letter until they caved in to
pressure.Error: Reference source not found Even strong supporters of Israel
reportedly felt uneasy blatantly impinging on the Presidents latitude in
foreign policy.54
The less activist Arab community, comparatively recent immigrants to the US
who tend to fragment along national lines, has so far failed to capitalize on
their own economic leverage, to make US political support a precondition for
conducting business with the Arab world, or to present countervailing claims
and compete for policy dominance in Washington.

CONCLUSION
The strategic and moral case for one-sided US support of Israel clearly has its
limits. The US national interest would profit from a reversion to the more
even-handed Middle East policies of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Ford,
Carter or George HW Bush, who sought to maintain the regional balance of
power, rather than to entrench Israels military superiority and underwrite her
economic and political dominance of the region. Even President Reagan,
among Israels greatest champions in the White House, insisted: 55 It is not

48
Chairman, Senate Foreign Relations Committee (1959-1974)
49
Thomas (2007,51)
50
Thomas (2007,51) Senator Charles Mathias Jr
51
Feuerwerger, 1979, cited in Thomas (2007,50-1)
52
Thomas (2007,26)
53
Senators John Culver and Edward Kennedy
54
Cameron (2005,89) This performance was repeated in 2001, when AIPAC took only
days to secure the signatures of 70 senators in support of extending the Iran-Libya
Sanctions Act.
55
In response to Begins attempts to intensify congressional pressure on the White
House against the sale of AWACs to Saudi Arabia in 1981.
Colette Austin -9- April 2010
 the business of any other nation to make American foreign policy. A reprise
of this more balanced approach would be more conducive to regional stability
and more consistent with the long-term interests of both Israel and the United
States.
The foreign policy of the leading world power needs to be both coherent and
proactive, yet it is said that the increasing influence of ethnic interest groups,
with the Israel lobby predominant among them, has reduced US foreign policy
to little more than the stapling together of a series of goals put forth by
domestic constituency groups.56 The executive might yet reclaim the
initiative in foreign policy toward Israel if lobby influence could be reined in
proportionately through campaign finance reform. In view of the scale and
urgency of competing priorities, there may be little prospect of a much-
needed overhaul for some considerable time to come.
In an expression reminiscent of Presidents Eisenhower or Carter, but in reality
articulated by Nixon: The time has come to quit pandering to Israels
intransigent position regardless of how unreasonable they are. 57 In view
of Israels devaluation as a geopolitical asset, Americas tolerance of Israels
tendency to accept her support and decline her advice invites the conclusion
that Israel has indeed been marked out as an eternal ally of the United
States. So long as American largesse is not predicated on any expectation of
Israeli concessions towards peace in the Middle East, there will be no
incentive for Israel to compromise. Israel has everything to gain from
intransigence; long-term political deadlock provides the opportunity to
construct immutable demographic facts on the ground and to perpetuate
the territorial status quo. No country other than the US (and clearly not the
UN) wields such leverage over Israeli policy, which means no other country is
in a comparable position to shape the Middle East peace process. If the US
plans to continue sending 3 billion of its tax dollars each year to Israel, 58
President Obama might like to consider the potential payoff to be derived
from attaching some political strings.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books
Cameron, Fraser. (2005) US Foreign Policy after the Cold War (UK: Routledge)
Clifford, C. (1991) Counsel to the President. (New York: Random House)
Mearsheimer, J & Walt, S. (2007) The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Quandt, W.B. (2001) Peace Process. (California: University of California Press)

56
Cameron (2005,87) cites former Secretary of Defense, James Schlesinger, in 2001.
57
Stephens (2006,142) In a 1973 memo to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
58
Which equates to more than $400 annually for each Israeli citizen. To put that in
context, the so-called first slice of US earthquake relief to devastated Haiti
amounts to $100 million, or $11 each.
Colette Austin - 10 - April 2010
 Shlaim, A. (2000) The Iron Wall. (London: Penguin)
Stephens, E. (2006) US Policy Towards Israel. (Brighton: Sussex Academic
Press)
Telhami, S. (2004) The Stakes: America in the Middle East. (USA: Westview
Press)
Thomas, M. (2007) American Policy Toward Israel: the Power and Limits of
Beliefs. (Oxford: Routledge)

Reports and Articles

Sharp, J.M. (2009) U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel. Congressional Research Service
Report RL33222.
Migdalovitz, C. (2009) Israel: Background and Relations with the United
States. Congressional Research Service Report RL-33476.
Egan, T. (2007) Vietnam, the Johnson Administration and the Role of
Domestic Public Opinion. 49th Parallel, Vol.21 (Autumn 2007) at p.9.
Available from http://www.49thparallel.bham.ac.uk/back/issue21/Egan.pdf

Lectures
Tarnoff, P. (2002) Issues in Foreign Policy after 911. [Lecture] University of
California, Berkeley, 4th February. Available from
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/courses.php?semesterid=14

Colette Austin - 11 - April 2010

 THE ETERNAL ALLY
Explaining the Special Status of Israel
in US Foreign Policy

Colette Austin