“Our support for Israel no longer serves our strategic interests.” Is America already reconsidering its relationship with Tel Aviv?

A former American official, who directly managed the Israeli-Palestinian file, believes that the time has come to fundamentally reconsider the relationship between the United States and Israel, arguing that “American support for Israel no longer serves American strategic interests.”

“The United States needs to move beyond Israel”

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz says that Stephen Simon, the former director of the US National Security Council for the Middle East and North Africa, under the Obama administration, recently published a book entitled “The Great Illusion: The Rise and Fall of American Ambition in the Middle East.” In it, he delves into decades of American policy in the Middle East, which has remained largely unchanged during successive administrations.

Haaretz says that Simon's arguments are considered more realistic, because Israel is now witnessing a major turning point in its own democracy, its relations with the Palestinians, and a possible normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia, all against the backdrop of US involvement in all of these matters.

Simon does not believe the United States is to blame for any of Israel's current problems. “Everyone is very interested in this current crisis precisely because it feels like a turning point,” he says of the simmering pro-democracy protests against the Netanyahu government’s extremist efforts to weaken the judiciary.

“What we are looking at now goes back to at least the 1930s,” Simon said. “There are technical problems, but the real problems are much deeper.”

“There is no specific strategic interest with Israel”

This brings us to the heart of the matter in Simon's eyes: issues related to Israel are purely political, not strategic. He says: “Why would the administration choose a battle with the current government in Israel over something over which the United States has no control? There is no specific strategic interest, and in the absence of a strategic stake, it is just a matter of politics.”

Simon points to the current political environment, whose roots go back to the late 1990s, as one that creates a structural disadvantage for Democrats, because the party as a whole is moving in a different direction than the Israeli government. “Based on that, why would there be an upcoming US election, where the stakes are really huge, is the Biden administration going into a minefield for this? It seems to me very unwise,” he says.

He claims that matters ostensibly related to strategic affairs such as military assistance are in fact political matters at heart. “It's easy to provide the things Israel wants from the United States,” he says. “A lot of it is primarily financial. We have a GDP of $21 trillion, so who cares if you give $4 billion of that every year (in military aid)? In practice, It's a small amount of money, and it's well spent, so you have to do it,” he says.

“American efforts to resolve the conflict are in vain.”

This extends to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the peace process. Simon says that the United States began to realize during Barack Obama's first term that its efforts were in vain, and also when the efforts of then Secretary of State John Kerry were not met with much enthusiasm.

According to Simon, the foundations of the US-Israel relationship rest on “the liberal mood of a particular era,” first established by Harry Truman. He said: “He was deeply disturbed by the Holocaust and what happened to the Jews, there is no doubt about that... Truman recognized the Jewish state only 15 minutes after declaring the establishment of the State of Israel.”

The Israelis liked it, because they thought it would be more durable than commitments based on shared values. By the end of the Cold War, the United States had done what it set out to do: defeat its adversaries and emerge as the most powerful player in the Middle East, Simon says.

The change took hold during Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign, during which he made his claim for office partly on the basis that Obama had seemingly abandoned Israel. This was the first time Israel had been “blatantly used to attack an opposition party,” Simon said.

Manipulating American domestic politics

Simon believes that the Obama administration's decision to reach an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan during the second term is due to personalities and not to a specific strategy. He says, "Why did the Obama administration make that play in the second term to try to do something about the Palestinians? Obama really wanted to do it, so he told them just do it, and it worked more or less how people expected it to work."

If the relationship between Israel and the United States is more about politics than strategy, as Simon argues, then the strategic elements within this relationship exist only as wedges that simply cause further separation between the two parties, such as Iran's nuclear program.

“Israel has the power to go its own way while still extracting resources from the United States,” Simon says. He adds: "Historians may view Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as strategically great for Israel because he succeeded in achieving independence from the United States while at the same time manipulating American domestic politics."

A clear shift in the position of Americans towards Israel

At the same time, the American street itself no longer has the same old mood towards Israel, as opinion polls indicate a clear shift in the position of Americans towards Israel, especially young people.

An opinion poll conducted by Gallup in March 2023 showed that the majority of American voters from the Democratic Party had shifted away from supporting Israel and had become more inclined and sympathetic to the Palestinians, for the first time ever.

Another opinion poll was conducted by the Jewish Electoral Institute in America in July 2021, the results of which showed that 35% of American Jewish voters believe that Israel has become a “racist state” that applies against the Palestinians the apartheid system that the white South African government was applying against citizens. Black people.

Many American writers and analysts attribute the clear shift in American public opinion towards Israel, which is considered Washington's first strategic ally in the Middle East and enjoyed unwavering support from both the Republican and Democratic parties, to Benjamin Netanyahu, the extreme right-wing politician and the person who served as Prime Minister in Tel Aviv for a longer period of time than any other politician.

But the Gallup poll was conducted last February, and the current Netanyahu government, which is described as the most extreme government in the history of the Jewish state, had not spent more than two months in power, which means that the striking change in the positions of the majority of American youth cannot be reversed. Only to that government.

The poll conducted by the Jewish Electoral Institute in America was conducted in July 2021, and at that time Netanyahu was not prime minister. Rather, the Israeli government was an alliance of left-wing parties and also included Arab parties for the first time. It was led by Naftali Bennett and then Yair Lapid, and the American politicians were They describe it as a "reconciliation government."

Therefore, one of the reasons for the shift in the position of American youth, which is becoming closer to the Palestinians than to Israel, may be linked - in no small part - to the Israeli shift towards the right in a fierce and accelerating manner. Extremist religious parties, parties defending settlers in the occupied territories, and politicians convicted of terrorism by Israeli courts, such as Itamar Ben Gvir, Minister of Internal Security in Netanyahu’s current government, have become remarkably in control of Israel and its policies, and they are sparing no effort in eliminating any hope of establishing a state. Palestinian one day.