Aesthetic Scholar: The United States and Israel are "drifting apart" on the Middle East issue

Reference News Network reported on April 12 that Hussein Ibish, a senior scholar at the Institute of Arab States in the Gulf in Washington, D.C., a US think tank, published an article on the website of the American monthly magazine "The Atlantic" on April 5, "The United States and Israel are drifting apart." For the first time in modern history, the long-term visions and goals of the two countries have clashed due to the growing and direct conflict between Israel's territorial ambitions and U.S. strategic interests in the Middle East, the authors say. Excerpts from the full text are as follows:

A rift has arisen between Israel and the United States. Since the Eisenhower administration forced Israel to withdraw its troops from the Sinai Peninsula in the mid-50s of the 20th century, there has never been such a serious or deep rift between the two countries. U.S. President Joe Biden has expressed grave displeasure over the Israeli attack this week that killed seven aid workers at the "Central Kitchen of the World". He reportedly had a tense phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But these are only superficial cracks, and the underlying divisions are much deeper.

Long-term visions conflict

Washington and Tel Aviv disagree not only on tactics, but not even just on medium-term planning. For the first time in modern history, the long-term visions and goals of the two countries have clashed as Israel's territorial ambitions and U.S. strategic interests in the Middle East have come into increasingly serious and direct conflict.

How and when Israel enters Rafah is a short-term tactical dispute. In the medium term, Israel and the Biden administration are at odds over the prospect of an Israeli offensive against Lebanon's Allah Party.

Allah is probably one of the most powerful non-State fighting forces in human history and the most serious direct military threat facing Israel. Allah estimates that 150,000 rockets and missiles — many precision-guided — capable of striking any target in Israel — are likely to overwhelm the Iron Dome anti-missile system.

Since the days since the Hamas attack on October 7 last year, hawkish members of Israel's war cabinet, notably Defense Minister Yoaf Galant, have been urging a preemptive strike against Allah. Routine skirmishes have taken a toll on both sides, particularly on the Lebanese side, but Allah has made it clear in word and deed that it does not want a wider war with Israel at this time. Nevertheless, Israel seems to be preparing for a large-scale ground offensive against Lebanon in the spring or early summer (at least trying to convey this impression).

The invasion could be a prelude to what the Biden administration has been trying to avoid since Oct. 7: a regional conflict that could draw the United States and Iran into it. Tehran doesn't want that either. But some other players may be happy to see the war expand regionally, including some militias in Iran's "Axis of Resistance" network, such as Hamas and some in Iraq, but not Allah, and a powerful faction in Israel's war cabinet.

Israeli hawks believe that an expanded war would certainly be bad for the United States, Allah and Iran, but could be good for Israel. According to their logic, even without a decisive victory in Gaza, the war in Lebanon could restore Israel's deterrent, undermine Iran's deeper strategic interests, and could trigger an escalating conflict that could lead to a U.S. strike at Iran and its nuclear facilities. As a result, the Biden administration faces a thorny problem: America's most important policy objectives regarding the Gaza crisis could be challenged and even disrupted by its key regional partners.

Strategic interests diverge

There are significant near- and medium-term disagreements between Washington and Tel Aviv, but the true scale of the disagreements is only visible at the top. The United States and Israel have different visions of the future of the region, Israel's identity and borders, and U.S. strategic interests.

Nearly every major U.S. goal in the Middle East requires a strong, U.S.-led integrated coalition that combines Israel's military capabilities with Saudi Arabia's financial, cultural, and religious authority. This is the logic behind the agreement on the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which was expected to be reached by October 7 last year. The war in Gaza prompted Saudi Arabia to freeze those negotiations. But by early January, senior Saudi officials had expressed interest in reviving the agreement, provided that Israel accepted the right to Palestinian statehood and helped establish a framework for Palestinian statehood.

The United States — indeed, the entire international community — has also concluded that the solution to this conflict, which has lasted for nearly a century, requires the establishment of a Palestinian State alongside Israel. But Israel is doing the opposite. Not only Netanyahu, but his entire cabinet, as well as the majority of the members of the parliament, refused to consider a two-state solution.

Israel has never formally recognized the right of Palestine to statehood, nor has it ever begun any process with Palestinian statehood as the ultimate goal. On the contrary, since the mid-90s of the twentieth century, Israel has slowly and then rapidly moved in the opposite direction – annexing large swathes of the occupied West Bank, which would make Palestinian statehood almost impossible. This anti-peace agenda is now the official position of the Israeli government, not just that of the Likud Party and other right-wing parties. The Trump administration proposed "peace and prosperity" in 2020 to support the plan. Under this plan, Israel would annex more than 30 percent of the West Bank, including the Jordan Valley, and any potential Palestinian entity would be completely surrounded by a much larger Israel. The current senior ministers of Israel's cabinet are even talking about not only annexing Gaza, but also about driving the Palestinians out of Gaza.

Israel has come to a fork in the road

The United States and Israel have tactical differences over Rafah and medium-term strategic differences over Lebanon. However, in the case of Palestinian statehood, the breakdown between the two sides lies in the vision of the future.

The desire to include most of the occupied West Bank through expansion is not a complete consensus in Israel, but there are many supporters, with a 2020 poll showing support from as many as half of the Israeli population, making it unlikely that any government will take definitive action against this plan. Slowing down the pace of this catastrophe is perhaps the best Israeli politics can create.

Israel has come to a fork in the road. This country can either consolidate ties with Washington and strengthen them through partnerships with Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, or it can work towards the illegal annexation of occupied territories, expelling many Palestinians in the process and stripping those who remain of their citizenship. If Israel chooses the latter path, it will lose the opportunity to forge a broader Middle East alliance. The same may be true of the American people: right-wing evangelicals and Orthodox Jews may sympathize with this expansionist project, but many other Americans, including Jewish Americans, see it as illegitimately and grossly unjust. Their doubts will reinforce the existing consensus that Israel's intransigence on the Palestinian issue has disastrous consequences for U.S. interests in the region.

Thus, the differences between the United States and Israel over Rafah are evident, the differences over Lebanon are looming in the spring and summer, and the contradictions over the annexation of territories or Palestinian independence seem irreconcilable in the long term: as the differences widen, so does the rift between the two. Both the United States and Israel oppose Iran's hegemony in the Middle East, but unless Israel changes its stance on Palestinian statehood, this may be the only overlapping point where U.S. and Israeli interests coincide. (Compiled by Zhao Feifei)