Throughout the Gaza conflict, President Joe Biden has been about as supportive of Israel as its leaders could have hoped. He has issued statements supporting its \u201cright to self-defense,\u201d blocked UN Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire, and even chose to move forward with a previously approved US arms sale to Israel worth $735 million.<\/p>\n
In short, it seems like the US-Israel alliance is as strong as ever. But beneath the surface, there are signs that the relationship isn\u2019t what it once was. Despite Biden\u2019s firm stance, the US and Israel may be heading for a divorce in the long run.<\/p>\n
The most visible of these signs is the rising discontent with Israel among progressive Democrats in Congress. The left flank of the party, represented by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has been unsparingly critical of Israel \u2014 with Ocasio-Cortez and her allies in the House, like Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib (who is of Palestinian descent), calling Israel an \u201capartheid state.\u201d <\/p>\n
But even some more centrist Democrats with strong pro-Israel bona fides are taking a harder stance. Rep. Greg Meeks (NY), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, initially called for a pause on the new arms sale; Sen. Robert Menendez (NJ), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has suggested Israel is not taking enough care to avoid killing civilians in Gaza.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you don\u2019t follow congressional statements on this stuff over time, it is really hard to explain how remarkable this is,\u201d writes Yousef Munayyer, a nonresident fellow at the Arab Center think tank in Washington, DC. <\/p>\n
The Democratic position on Gaza reflects a long-running process of partisan polarization of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. <\/p>\n
The US-Israel alliance, which has its origins in Cold War geopolitics, has been a bipartisan endeavor for decades. But a series of factors \u2014 including the actions of specific leaders like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and deeper political trends in both countries \u2014 has created a partisan imbalance. Republicans have become more pro-Israel than ever, while Democrats are becoming more and more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are becoming increasingly aware of the indefensible human rights situation on the ground in Gaza,\u201d Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) told me via email. \u201cThis includes a diverse coalition of progressive Jewish-Americans, Muslim-Americans and others who see our humanity as directly tied to one another.\u201d<\/p>\n
Historically, the cornerstone of the US-Israel alliance has been bipartisan support \u2014 both on Capitol Hill and among the American public. You need both parties to continue approving US aid to Israel in Congress; you need policy continuity in the White House to ensure unchanging US support in international forums like the UN. The more partisan Israel becomes, the weaker the alliance gets.<\/p>\n
Unless something fundamental changes, it\u2019s easy to see how the US-Israel alliance could continue to unravel in the long term. Biden may be the last Democratic president to give Israel a blank check during a war.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
How the US and Israel became so close<\/p>\n
The US and Israel weren\u2019t always close allies. <\/p>\n
When Israel (along with France and Britain) invaded Egypt in 1956, the United States condemned the Israel attack. And the US actively worked against Israel\u2019s clandestine nuclear program for years.<\/p>\n
Even when the US did come to support Israel, it was more about cold strategic calculation than anything else. American presidents and strategists came to see Israel as a useful tool for containing Soviet influence in the Middle East, which was significant among Arab states, and used its diplomatic and military support to weave Israel firmly into the capitalist bloc.<\/p>\n
This strategic justification came down with the Berlin Wall. Yet US aid to Israel kept flowing after the Cold War, as did diplomatic support \u2014 propelled largely by US policy toward the Middle East and American domestic politics.<\/p>\n
In the post-Cold War era, the US saw itself as a guarantor of regional peace and stability in the Middle East \u2014 even, and perhaps especially, when it upset that stability through actions like the invasion of Iraq. In its self-appointed role as Middle East manager, Washington cultivated alliances with some of the region\u2019s status-quo-oriented powers \u2014 places like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and Israel.<\/p>\n
Moreover, every post-Cold War president through Barack Obama saw solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a priority for Middle East policy, believing (to varying degrees) that solving the conflict was both a moral imperative and important for improving regional political dynamics. America\u2019s alliance with Israel was supposed to help, positioning the US as one of the only international brokers Israelis felt like they could trust. <\/p>\n
But US domestic politics was equally important. Polling data shows that, for the past several decades, supporting Israel has been popular with a clear majority of American voters. Key constituencies in both parties \u2014 Jews on the Democratic side, evangelicals on the Republican side \u2014 have been especially vocal in Israel\u2019s defense, willing to devote resources and activist demonstrations to support pro-Israel policies.<\/p>\n
Historically, Israel\u2019s image as \u201cthe only democracy in the Middle East\u201d has been especially important in cementing the American pro-Israel consensus \u2014 giving a sense that America wasn\u2019t just justified in supporting Israel, but obligated to do so in order to defend a beleaguered democracy. \u201cIt is the existence of a shared identity and transnational values that is the foundation of this relationship,\u201d Michael Barnett, a professor at George Washington University, wrote in 1996.<\/p>\n
But in recent years, these foundations have started to crack. <\/p>\n
At both the elite and public level, Americans have become skeptical of the strategic wisdom of deep involvement in the Middle East. The Biden administration has sought to deemphasize US involvement in the region, reflecting the rising consensus that it\u2019s been a quagmire distracting America from the more pressing challenges posed by a rising China. Simply put: Maintaining strong relations with Middle Eastern allies like Israel is seen as less important to America than it was in the recent past.<\/p>\n
At the same time, the public consensus that the US should take an unconditional pro-Israel stance has weakened. <\/p>\n
A March 2021 Gallup poll found that, for the first time in nearly 15 years of polling, a majority of Democrats favored \u201cputting more pressure on Israel\u201d to make compromises for peace with the Palestinians.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s this last trend that should particularly trouble policymakers in Jerusalem: They need Democratic support to keep the aid flowing and ensure strong diplomatic support in bodies like the UN. <\/p>\n
But there are deep reasons behind the growing Democratic skepticism about Israel \u2014 ones that are likely to widen the divide rather than narrow it in the coming years.<\/p>\n
Why Democrats and Israel have started to drift apart<\/p>\n
The most significant reason for a widening gap between Israel and the Democratic Party is also the easiest to grasp: The center of Israeli politics has moved far to the right as Democrats have moved to the left.<\/p>\n
The Israeli left\u2019s public support plummeted in the early 2000s, after the peace process it had championed collapsed into the violence of the Second Intifada \u2014 the bloodiest conflict between Israelis and Palestinians in decades. When Benjamin Netanyahu became prime minister in 2009, he and his Likud party continued to move to the right \u2014 reflecting fundamental changes in Israel\u2019s political center of gravity.<\/p>\n
The center-left Labor party, historically the dominant force in Israeli elections, now holds a mere seven of 120 seats in the Knesset (parliament). The left is so weak that, prior to the Gaza war, it was ready to agree to a deal that would hand the premiership to Naftali Bennett \u2014 a far-right firebrand who wants to annex parts of the West Bank.<\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s occupation of the West Bank has deepened significantly under Netanyahu, with settlements expanding at rapid rates in the past 10 years. The justification that shielded Israel from charges of operating an \u201capartheid state\u201d \u2014 that the occupation was temporary, to end with the creation of an independent Palestine \u2014 has become harder to maintain.<\/p>\n
All of these developments have undermined the traditional values-based argument for US support for Israel that has been crucial to maintaining the alliance in the post-Cold War era. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve always been for two states. Still are,\u201d Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) wrote on Twitter. \u201cThe defining \u2018shift\u2019 has been that the Netanyahu government and the Republicans have effectively abandoned the idea of a viable Palestinian state.\u201d<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s not only Israel that\u2019s changed: Democrats are also considerably more progressive than they used to be.<\/p>\n
The median Democrat is more left-wing across the board than they were even 10 years ago. And there\u2019s some evidence that the constituencies that make up an increasingly large share of the Democratic Party \u2014 African Americans, Latinos, and younger voters \u2014 are less sympathetic to Israel than the general population. Jewish Democrats, that traditional bastion of American pro-Israel sentiment, have soured on Israel under Netanyahu: A Pew survey released in May found that nearly twice as many Jewish Democrats believe the US is \u201ctoo supportive\u201d of Israel than believe it\u2019s \u201cnot supportive enough.\u201d <\/p>\n
J Street, the liberal pro-Israel lobby that supports increasing pressure on Israel to end the occupation of Palestinian territory, regularly attracts leading Democratic politicians to their annual conference. Many also boycott a similar event by AIPAC, J Street\u2019s more powerful and more rigidly pro-Israel cousin.<\/p>\n
Moreover, two political tendencies with pro-Palestinian bents \u2014 democratic socialism and social justice activism \u2014 have become more ideologically influential inside the party. In left-wing circles, support for Israel is often described as support for imperialism and white supremacy. <\/p>\n
There\u2019s a reason critics of Israel in the House like Omar have used the phrase \u201cPalestinian lives matter\u201d in discussing the current crisis: It\u2019s pressing on the Democratic attachment to Israel at of one its weakest points. Democrats and Israel are just in drastically different political places, and it makes a once-natural connection much harder to sustain.<\/p>\n
What an unraveling alliance looks like<\/p>\n
The notion of a weakening US-Israel alliance might sound fuzzy, maybe even fanciful. How can you describe an alliance that still leads to billions of military aid every year as one under stress?<\/p>\n