Mr Zahid Hussain is a retired engineer, based in Canada.
The United States supported the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. In the early decades, US support for Israel was mostly moral and was described by President John F Kennedy in the early ’60s as a “special relationship.” This relationship changed drastically after the 1967 Arab-Israel war when the US saw Israel as a stabilizing force in the Middle East to ensure reliable oil supply from the region on which it so heavily depended.
The strong bond with Israel also acted as a counterweight to the growing influence of the Soviet Union at that time. Since the 1967 war, the foreign policy of US has supported Israel not only morally, but also diplomatically, financially, and militarily. Successive US governments have solidified this support even further by adding every possible adjective to this support by calling it unwavering, unshakable, iron-clad, and rock-solid, to name a few.
Over the last three decades, the US and Israel have been cooperating in developing advanced defence technologies, particularly in the surveillance and intelligence domain. At the same time, the trade between the two countries has grown steadily making the US Israel’s top trading partner, with annual bilateral trade of nearly $50 billion in goods and services, further strengthening the bond between the two countries.
This support has not diminished even when Israel ignored the clear wishes of the US presidents regarding its actions, such as the establishment of new settlements in the West Bank or ignoring the United Nations Security Council resolutions that the US did not veto. Palestinians and their supporters have often singled out the unconditional support of the US for Israel as the key reason why Israel does not seem motivated to negotiate a peace deal with Palestinians.
The horrors of the Israeli war in Gaza have affected everyone who has seen the heart-wrenching images of death and destruction. Young people in particular have been deeply disturbed as they mostly get the news from social media and podcasts on their hand-held devices which are full of horrific images. As of today, more than 17,000 Palestinians have been killed.
According to an NBC poll conducted in mid-November 2023, 56% of all US voters disapproved of President Joe Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war. Among voters aged 18 to 34, a whopping 70% of them disapprove. This level of disapproval is problematic for Biden as, along with other issues, it puts his poll numbers behind Donald Trump in the presidential election next year. Trump now holds a slight advantage in the survey among young voters.
The loss of young voters’ traditionally solid support can even cost the Democrats not only the White House but also the two houses of Congress where they currently hold a very slim majority in the Senate and are short of a majority by only a handful of seats in the House.
Does this mean that the present or future administrations in the US would recalibrate their unconditional support of Israel? Other strategic imperatives would prevent the US from significantly changing its support for Israel such as to deter Iran and its proxies from causing any trouble in the region or to counter the growing influence of China and Russia in that area. It should, however, be possible for the US to nudge Israel to seriously start negotiating with Palestinians in exchange for its support.
The US is still officially committed to a two-state solution which is the goal of Palestinians. President Biden is in the final year of his term before the next presidential election in November 2024. In January 2024, the US election cycle will begin in earnest with the start of primaries. It is unlikely that Biden will undertake a risky major initiative of peacemaking in the Middle East during the election cycle.
It should, however, be possible for him to persuade Israel to take significant steps to loosen its tight control of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to improve their living conditions. This confidence-building step will go a long way to restart the peace process which was launched in Oslo in 1993 when the time is right. Palestinians will respond positively if they see a possibility of a peace deal.
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