President Biden suspended an approved shipment of heavy weapons to Israel to prevent bloodshed in Gaza’s Rafah. How dare Benjamin Netanyahu continues to defy the American president? Shakil Anwar writes about how much influence America has on Israel .
President Biden continues to increase pressure on Israel to end the war in Gaza. Two days after announcing the suspension of a shipment of heavy-hitting bombs on May 6, a US State Department report said Israel’s use of American weapons in Gaza may have violated international human rights law. Reports of an ally America has always tried to shield from accusations of human rights abuses make it easy to understand that President Biden is telling Benjamin Netanyahu that he is no longer willing to put up with it.
President Biden has been warning the Israeli government for several days that he does not want a major military operation in Rafah, a city south of Gaza that is crowded with 1 million displaced Palestinian refugees. But he did not get any promise. An angry US president finally announced a freeze on a key arms shipment on Wednesday. It is known that this consignment contains 3,500 bombs weighing 2,000 pounds and 500 pounds and other military equipment. This is the first such decision in decades.
But there is still no clear indication that Netanyahu’s government is backing down because of that.
The fighting between Hamas and Israel in Gaza has been going on for more than seven months and shows no sign of stopping. The civilian death toll has risen to over 35,000, the majority of whom are women and children. Images of these bodies and devastation are printed daily on American TV screens, on the front pages of newspapers and on social media.
How Biden’s decision came about
President Biden is worried about these images in an election year. Because the division within his party is growing over arms and support for Israel in Gaza. Public opinion is shifting. As a result, he is now seeking an end to this war. He has been expressing that desire since January. Frequently sent his Foreign Secretary Anthony Blinken to Jerusalem. He called himself many times. Netanyahu did not listen. President Biden took the rare decision to suspend arms aid to America’s closest ally while the war was still going on.
Since the start of the military operation in Gaza in October, the US has approved more than 100 arms shipments to Israel, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, a US research organization. These include weapons of mass destruction such as anti-tank bombs. There was growing pressure from a section of the Democratic Party on Biden to use arms aid as a strategy. Several reliable American media outlets have been reporting since January that the White House is considering using arms aid to persuade Israel to agree to a cease-fire agreement.
On January 28, NBC said in a report that the White House had ordered the Pentagon to investigate what weapons Israel was seeking in order to put pressure on them by intercepting their shipments. But the matter was hanging for months. But in early April, Biden became enraged when seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen were killed in an Israeli bomb. The statement he immediately issued was strongly critical of the Israeli government. And a month after that, the announcement to suspend the shipment of weapons and heavy bombs.
The New York Times wrote in a report, the fact that so many aid workers were killed at the same time made President Biden very angry and he may not have been patient anymore. But the question is, can Biden keep Israel out of Rafah? Will Netanyahu overcome the pressure? No signs of it yet. No one can say with an oath that such signs will be seen in the near future.
Because Netanyahu’s number one priority is now to get out of the mud that he has fallen into politically due to the unprecedented attack of Hamas on Israel on October 7. The choice of American president is now secondary to him. Now the biggest consideration for him is his own political existence.
But the fundamental issue that has been debated by researchers and observers for quite some time now is how much influence America has on Israel? Can an American president now pressure Israel to do what he wants?
There is no dispute that since the creation of the State of Israel, America’s financial and military support has been its mainstay for decades. Israel has always been number one in America’s list of financial and military aid. So far Israel has received at least 300 billion dollars in aid from America. Israel is one of the few allies that receives many of America’s sophisticated and sensitive weapons. There is also almost unconditional American diplomatic aid; That is why Israel does not care about any criticism at the international level.
America-Israel tensions are different episodes
Even before Joe Biden, several American presidents at various times tried to force Israel to listen to them by threatening to withhold aid, and to a large extent they succeeded.
In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan blocked arms shipments to Israel several times during the war. In 1982, when Israel began indiscriminately bombing Lebanon in an offensive against Palestinian guerrillas, and when the bodies of the dead began to appear on television every day, Reagan was outraged. He intercepted a shipment of cluster bombs and 75 F-16 aircraft.
The Israeli prime minister at the time called Begin and threatened to stop the bombing and withdraw the troops. Begin was eventually forced to listen, even if he didn’t like it. Before that, Ronald Reagan was also angered by the bombing of Iraq’s nuclear facilities without consulting America in 1981. The shipment of F-16 aircraft was stopped for some time.
Earlier in 1956, President Eisenhower had threatened economic sanctions to pressure Israel into withdrawing troops from Sinai, Egypt. President Ford threatened to renegotiate the entire bilateral relationship to persuade Israel to sign a peace treaty with Egypt. Then in 1991, President George W. Bush suspended a $10 billion loan guarantee for Israel in a dispute over Jewish settlement construction in the occupied West Bank.
Israel is reducing American dependence
But as much as America’s pressure on Israel used to work until then, it doesn’t work as much now, President Biden may be feeling it now.
Why not—Many observers believe that Israel has made a conscious effort over two decades to reduce its dependence on the United States in the financial, military, and even diplomatic spheres.
Three years ago, the American journalist Max Fisher, in his investigative report in the Interpreter magazine, showed one by one how Israel has been trying to gradually achieve ‘sovereignty’ since the 1990s, almost secretly, and, according to him, has largely succeeded. Israel is now making the essential weapons itself. The amount of American aid is still huge, but the remarkable growth of Israel’s economy over the past 10 years has reduced the dependence. Whereas in 1981 American aid was 10 percent of the Israeli economy, in 2020 it stands at just 1 percent.
According to Max Fischer, Israel is now very independent in the diplomatic world as well. They have developed very close relations with several countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America without the approval of America. Israel is trying to create a sphere of influence by providing these countries with various types of modern technology including intelligence surveillance technology. Anti-colonial countries like India are now close allies of Israel.
Most importantly, writes Max Fischer, Israel no longer wants American mediation in the conflict with Palestine, and it feels that it has the power to monopolize the conflict. Citing various recent public opinion polls, he also wrote that the vast majority of Israelis are now disillusioned with making peace with the Palestinians. They don’t take the injustice towards the Palestinians as much as they used to. As a result, there is no democratic pressure on Israeli politicians on this issue. As a result, it is now very easy for them to ignore America on the Palestinian issue.
Even last November, President Biden repeatedly spoke of an independent Palestinian state as a long-term solution to the conflict. After the end of the war in Gaza, he warned that the US would not support any attempt to establish a new Israeli occupation there. Netanyahu did not listen to those words.
Israel in American Domestic Politics
Recent changes in US domestic politics regarding Israel have emboldened Israel. In a change of strategy, the Republican Party has now taken the path of unconditionally supporting Israel. On the other hand, the polarization among Democrats on the issue of Israel is hardening. And Netanyahu is taking advantage of this. He had the courage to stand up in the US Parliament and openly insult President Obama on the issues of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the nuclear deal with Iran. He even campaigned for Trump during the later elections. And for this, Netanyahu did not have to suffer any consequences.
America has single-handedly built the foundation of Israel’s economy and military power. It has been supplying logistics for decades. But they never used that influence properly. American leaders have occasionally resented Israel on Palestinian or Arab issues, but ultimately sided with them. And that has given Israel confidence that they are out of touch. President Biden is now feeling the extent of their influence over their closest ally in America.