The U.S. Throws Its Support Behind Israel, Saving Its Scrutiny for After the War
10 MIN READOct 12, 2023 | 21:01 GMT
A photo illustration shows the U.S. and Israeli flags.
A photo illustration shows the U.S. and Israeli flags.
(Getty Images)
U.S.-Israeli ties will remain close over the course of the current war, but tensions will grow in the aftermath as the White House pressures Israel to reduce the risk of future conflicts that might drag the United States back into the Middle East. The United States has unequivocally thrown its support behind its long-time ally Israel following the attacks that the Gaza-based Palestinian militant group Hamas began on Oct. 7. In a nationwide speech delivered on Oct. 11, U.S. President Joe Biden declared that ''the United States [had] Israel's back,'' and would ''make sure the Jewish and democratic state of Israel can defend itself today, tomorrow, as we always have.'' Beyond words, the U.S. government has also given Israel substantial military aid over the past week. Immediately after the initial Hamas assault, the USS Gerald R. Ford — the U.S. Navy's largest aircraft carrier — was deployed to the Mediterranean as an explicit show of support. Washington has also begun arms transfers to resupply the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), and has reportedly sent U.S. special forces to advise on the hostage crisis in the Gaza Strip as well. Moreover, the United States has warned Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah that it may intervene on Israel's behalf if the Gaza conflict begins spilling into other countries, with Joint Chief of Staff head General Charles Q. Brown telling Tehran on Oct. 9 ''not to get involved'' as U.S. forces raced to the region. However, not all U.S. politicians have reacted the same way. In an Oct. 11 radio interview with Fox News, Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that he and Israel were ''not prepared.'' In addition to former President Trump, at least one other member of the GOP has also expressed skepticism toward Israel in the wake of the Hamas attacks. On Oct. 11, Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) Massie said he would not break his policy of voting against all foreign aid for the Middle Eastern country, leading media to speculate that other lawmakers in Congress, like progressive members of the Democratic Party, might join him for a no-vote on future support to Israel.
While Israel and the United States do not have a formal defense treaty, Israel is a major non-NATO ally, which allows it access to more advanced U.S. weapons, a U.S. stockpile on its territory, and enhanced training opportunities. Nevertheless, Israel's defense is a bipartisan concern: the country has received an estimated $160 billion in total U.S. aid since its foundation in 1948, much of which came after the United States and Israel aligned in the 1960s against Soviet-backed Egypt and Syria.
Despite these close ties, U.S. public opinion on Israel has shifted over the past decade — driven by both partisanship and generational shifts in how Americans' perception of the country views Israel, with Democrats and younger voters tending to be more critical of Israel. In March 2023, Gallup reported for the first time that Democrats viewed Palestine with greater sympathy than Israel, with 49% of respondents sympathizing more with Palestinians, and 38% sympathizing more with Israelis. Support for Palestine among U.S. independent voters also hit a new high in the 2023 survey, with 32% favoring Palestinians. In the same survey conducted in 2014, just before the last major Gaza war, only 23% of Democrats and 18% of independents said they sympathized more with Palestinians. Republican sympathy has remained highly aligned with Israel, with 78% saying they favored Israel over Palestine in the 2023 Gallup poll compared with the 80% who said so in the 2014 poll.
Before the war, the United States had expressed concern about many of the Israeli government's actions and policies. The Biden administration has been particularly critical of the Israeli government's recent push to overhaul the country's judicial system, which has sparked widespread protests since the reforms were announced at the beginning of the year. In July, after Israel's government passed its controversial ''reasonableness'' bill that banned judges from using liberal legal customs to decide cases, Biden called Prime Minister Netanyahu to try to convince him to broaden the consensus on future reforms, indicating the White House was concerned about domestic stability and its impact on Israel's security and military. That same month, the White House also chided Netanyahu's move to form an alliance with far-right partners, with Biden noting that the new government included ''some of the most extreme members'' he had ever seen in Israel. And in regards to managing Palestinian tensions, the White House has criticized the Israeli government's push to expand West Bank settlements, and also condemned its conduct during the previous 2021 Gaza war.
During the Gaza war of 2021, Biden used back channels to de-escalate and pressure the Israeli government to use restraint, which helped bring an end to that conflict in 11 days. After the 2021 Gaza war, the U.S. House of Representatives, in an unprecedented but ultimately symbolic move, voted not to immediately send new Iron Dome supplies to Israel. Though the body ultimately voted overwhelmingly in favor of the legislation, progressive Democrats in Congress were in part responding to their supporters' increased criticism of Israel and demands for greater scrutiny of aid to the country in the wake of the war.
Tensions also existed between Netanyahu and former President Barack Obama, particularly over the latter's push to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran, which Netanyahu and Israel said was too weak to prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon.
In the United States, Jewish Democrats have also become increasingly critical of the current composition of the Israeli government, which includes Religious Zionism, an heir party to the far-right Kahanist movement that was banned in both the United States and Israel. In addition, liberal Jewish Americans have expressed alarm over Netanyahu's attempts to legally shield himself from ongoing corruption trials. Many also oppose his government's judicial reforms on the grounds that they risk weakening Israel's democracy.
The United States will remain willing to resupply, diplomatically support and potentially militarily intervene in the course of the conflict. But once the emergency phase of the war is over, U.S. politicians will join their Israeli counterparts in questioning the Netanyahu government's role in the intelligence failures that led to Hamas' surprise attack. The United States will continue to back Israel in the wake of the new war by supporting its Gaza military campaign and ongoing search for hostages, as well as by helping deter Iran and Hezbollah from escalating into a regional conflict. But Washington will not need to maintain this level of support once the war is over, which will likely see the United States join Israelis in scrutinizing the Netanyahu government's role in the latest surge of violence. There is already substantial domestic outrage in Israel over their government's failure to anticipate the Hamas terrorist attack that killed over 1,300 Israelis, which is now being compared to the worst days of the Holocaust in Israeli media. In a Dialog Center poll released on Oct. 12, 86% of Israeli voters — including 79% of the ruling coalition's current supporters — said the new Gaza war was the result of failed government leadership. The IDF has promised to launch a full investigation into the causes of the Oct. 7 assault, which will likely find that the government's policies — namely, its management of Hamas in Gaza and push to expand settlements in the West Bank —- were at least partially to blame in triggering the current conflict with the Palestinians. When the investigation is complete, such findings will arm American critics of U.S.-Israel ties with more evidence that the United States should further scrutinize its support of Israel and, in particular, more aggressively push back against the policies of Netanyahu's government.
U.S. national security debates will feed into the reappraisal of U.S.-Israeli ties. With the United States now involved with arming Ukraine and trying to deter China, Washington has long focused on trying to reduce its military presence in the region and build up a network of friends and allies to replace its security footprint. Already, U.S. defense officials worry that an extended war in Israel might affect the U.S. arms supply to Ukraine, with both Israeli and Ukrainian troops using the U.S.-manufactured 155mm artillery shell, a weapon that Israel would need at scale in case of a war in Lebanon and which Ukraine's demands have already stretched thin.
In the face of challenges from Russia and China, the United States has also been trying to de-escalate with Iran, including through a recent agreement to transfer $6 billion in frozen Iranian funds to Tehran in exchange for American prisoners. Concern about Iran and China has also spurred Washington to push for Saudi-Israeli normalization and a regionwide air defense network of its allies.
The political fallout from the Gaza conflict may make it virtually impossible for the United States to ink a defense pact with Israel. Concern about Iran and China has also spurred Washington to push for Saudi-Israeli normalization, along with a regionwide air defense network of its allies. As part of Israeli-Saudi normalization talks, the White House reportedly was prepared to offer Israel and Saudi Arabia defense pacts that would formally commit the United States to come to their aid if either country came under attack. Such offers may have been designed to increase the chances that any U.S. promises made to ink an Israeli-Saudi normalization deal could become part of a treaty passed by the U.S. Congress, which is skeptical of offering concessions to Saudi Arabia but more open to defense guarantees to Israel. But in the wake of the Gaza War, it's more clear that Israel's own policies could ignite conflicts that are not directly in America's interests and could push the United States into a war with Iran, making a defense pact for Israel less politically viable.
In response to domestic political pressure, the Biden administration might more actively intervene in Israeli politics to try to convince the Netanyahu government to address the policies that have driven violence with the Palestinians. While the Biden administration prefers to keep its criticism of the Israeli government private, the United States may press the Netanyahu government to change its settlement policies, approach to the judicial reforms, and policies towards the Gaza Strip that helped fuel the recent violence, even if such policies alienate the far-right that the government relies on. Additionally, the White House will have viable alternatives to Netanyahu's leadership, including former Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who refused to join the new Israeli unity government formed in the wake of the Hamas attacks and on Oct. 12 accused the Netanyahu government of ''unpardonable failures.'' Some Israeli voters and politicians motivated by their government's ability to manage ties with the United States, Washington will have the option to shape the public narrative surrounding the Israeli government and could help convince individual members of the Knesset, particularly from the center-right Likud party, to potentially bring down the government to hold fresh elections.
In the run-up to the Oslo Accords in 1992, the U.S. pushed the right-wing Israeli government of Likud's Yitzhak Shamir to take part in talks with the Palestinian Liberation Organization by threatening to block loans Israel needed to absorb immigrants from the collapsing Soviet Union, as the United States pushed to resolve the core drivers of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict after the 1st Intifada. Shamir relented and began the talks, but his government collapsed shortly thereafter.
