America Has Pressured Israel Before—and Can Do It Again

By Alia Brahimi, 

In 1991, President George H.W. Bush outraged Israeli leaders by conditioning aid and placing U.S. interests first.

On March 25, the United States took the highly unusual step of abstaining in a vote at the U.N. Security Council that called for a cease-fire in Gaza after six months of a relentless Israeli military campaign. However, immediately and controversially, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. made sure to deem the resolution “nonbinding.” Other Biden administration officials have also taken pains to “talk down” the significance of the vote.

The curious imbalance in the U.S.-Israel relationship has come into focus in recent weeks as the Biden administration slowly sharpens its criticism of Israel—and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains defiant. Israel continues to restrict aid trucks carrying water, food, and medicine to the 70 percent of Gazans facing a catastrophic, man-made famine.

Despite representing the world’s preeminent military power, on whom Israel depends for weapons, funds, and diplomatic cover, U.S. President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have resorted to performative workarounds, airdropping aid and building a floating pier off the shores of Gaza.

But there is an alternative. Rather than undertaking symbolic half-measures, the Biden administration could draw upon vast U.S. leverage and take its cue from a Republican Party predecessor: former President George H.W. Bush. In 1991, Bush Sr. and his secretary of state, James A. Baker III, made it clear that if Israel wanted to receive an aid package of $10 billion in loan guarantees, it had to stop using U.S. money to build Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.

The ensuing faceoff between the White House and the Israeli government, involving presidential veto threats and furious congressional lobbying from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), was one of the most fraught periods in U.S.-Israeli relations.

  Of course, the starting points of the two cases are different, in that Israel was not engaged in a full-scale war in 1991. However, political courage in Washington is arguably more necessary in wartime—particularly as charges of war crimes, including genocide, are taken seriously by the International Court of Justice and even in U.S. courts.

But unlike Biden and Blinken, Bush Sr. and Baker were firm in conditioning aid to Israel on respect for international law. The president told journalists in 1992 he would “not give one inch.” Washington should summon similar resolve today.

THE FRAYING TIES BETWEEN THE TWO NATIONS—which then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir would later describe as a “major explosion”—began in May 1991, when Israel’s ambassador to Washington warned the Bush administration that Israel would soon be requesting $10 billion in loan guarantees. The money would be used primarily to help Israel in its absorption of Soviet Jews, a task that would inevitably involve building more housing in the occupied territories as part of the Shamir government’s hardline settlement expansion policy. However, Baker believed that providing loan guarantees to Israel at that time, for that purpose, would be detrimental to U.S. interests.

A $400 million U.S. loan had been agreed the year before on the condition that it would not be used to build settlements on Palestinian land, but the Israelis violated this commitment as soon as the loan was released. Indeed, Israel’s settlement policy was moving forward at breakneck speed; in 1990 alone, under Housing and Construction Minister Ariel Sharon, between 6,000 and 7,000 Israelis settled in the occupied territories.

But Baker was also diligently laying the ground for a Middle East peace conference to be convened in Madrid that October—and he knew the prospect of billions of dollars of U.S. aid funding illegal Israeli settlements would certainly alienate the Arab delegates.

Baker called Shamir on Sept. 1, asking him to delay his request for the $10 billion. Shamir said no—and that he would continue to expand settlements as well. Bush Sr. then called a press conference to announce that he would ask Congress to defer action on any Israeli loan request for 120 days. Immediately, the Israelis put in the loan request. Simultaneously, pro-Israel organizations went into overdrive, mobilizing a thousand AIPAC supporters to march on Capitol Hill.