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Analysis

Israeli-US relations: Briefing with Dr Jonathan Rynhold

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On Thursday, 5 November, BICOM hosted a conference call for journalists with Dr Jonathan Rynhold, senior researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA) at Bar-Ilan University and author of The Arab-Israel Conflict in American Political Culture, to discuss Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming visit to the US and meeting with President Barack Obama. Below is an edited transcript.

The Obama-Netanyahu meeting

The main thing about this meeting is that the president and the prime minister, the American administration, the Israeli government, the Israeli security establishment, the American security establishment – everybody – wants this to be a good meeting in which the public message which goes out is that the special relationship between the US and Israel remains as robust and as strong as ever. The president likes to use the phrase ‘unshakeable and unbreakable’ and I expect he will do so again.

The reason both sides want it to be seen in that light is twofold. First of all, for both of them it’s important in terms of their domestic politics. Secondly – despite the disagreements on many issues on both sides – there’s a strong feeling that they share common strategic interests in the Middle East and that there is room to advance cooperation on those issues.

US-Israel relationship

It’s obviously good for an Israeli prime minister being seen to be in good relations with the US: when we at Bar-Ilan University polled the Israeli public about 10 months ago, they were asked what the most important elements in Israel’s security were and number one was the IDF but the number two answer was relations with the US.

Relations with the US was above and seen as more important than territory and also more important than peace agreements with Egypt, with Jordan and with the Palestinians and perhaps most interestingly, even people who defined themselves as right-wing think that the relationship with the US is more important to Israeli security than territory.

What might be a little bit more surprising perhaps in Europe is that it is equally (if not more) important for Obama to be seen to be having good relations with Israel. Despite the bad relationship on a personal level between Netanyahu and Obama, overall Americans, and the American political system, remains extremely pro-Israel. 75 per cent of Americans have a favourable view of Israel and that’s compared to about 25 per cent of Europeans. Democrats prefer Israel over the Palestinians in terms of sympathy by 2:1 at least.

It would be wrong to see the Iran deal as somehow a symptom of the US becoming less pro-Israel. If one looks at the deal and who supported it, American Jews were divided over it but a majority of Americans Jews are strongly attached to Israel – and they supported the deal. Their support for the deal was not related to a loss of sympathy or support for Israel. They didn’t think that the Iran deal would stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. They evidently just thought it was the best of a very bad set of options. The American public itself was actually against the deal – they were less in favour of it than American Jews and they continue to be pro-Israel.

There is one issue that Netanyahu will have to deal with in terms of American domestic politics and that is the damage that was done to bi-partisan support for Israel during his speech to Congress: which gave the impression that the prime minster was siding with the Republicans against the Democrats. In order to try and offset some of that damage he will be speaking not only at the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute but also at the liberal think tank the Center for American Progress.

Strategic ties

The first thing to note is that historically America and Israel have many times had strong disagreements on policy issues; perhaps one of the strongest and the heaviest pressure ever applied to Israel was by Henry Kissinger towards the end of the Yom Kippur War and in 1975 when America pressured Israel to withdraw from part of the Sinai without achieving a peace agreement.

After the US had won that battle it increased strategic cooperation with Israel and aid to Israel to unprecedented levels and institutionalised the relationship in ways that it had not been before. What we’re looking at now is that most of the talks will be about upgrading the strategic relationship.  Several things will happen without any controversy whatsoever: there will be an increase in the annual military aid to Israel which is currently slightly over $3bn dollars a year and that will go up; the current agreement runs till 2018 so they will re-negotiate and push it forward for another 10 years. Another issue will be the upgrading of certain weapons systems that Israel getsparticularly anti-ballistic missile technology.

Regional issues, Iran and Syria

Despite the bad personal relationship between the Netanyahu and Obama, intelligence cooperation between Israel and the US has never been better or more intimate and I expect that to continue. In part that will be to do with Israel’s capabilities in being able to monitor the Iran deal; it will also be about regional cooperation against Iran’s support for terrorism and for funding terror. The Americans will want Israel’s help and there’s agreement in a broad sense in trying to combat Iranian efforts to destabilise the region.

Two issues that will be somewhat more open to debate are what to do about Syria and what will be the terms of insurance policy regarding the Iran deal.

On Syria there is an internal Israeli disagreement about whether the main objective should be to block Assad because he’s pro Iranian and to keep the Iranians back, or whether ISIS and Iran are equally dangerous and that therefore Israel should just continue doing what it does now which is to prevent Iran supplying Hezbollah with weapon systems that could change the strategic balance. Israel will want to know what America is thinking about Syria and vice-versa.

The president himself has said that in 10-15 years the Iranians will have zero breakout time in terms of their ability to obtain a nuclear weapon. Israel will be looking for some kind of sense that the US is willing to strengthen deterrence against that possibility either by strengthening Israel’s ability to strike at Iran itself or by making it clearer to Israel under what circumstances the US itself would use force to prevent Iran going nuclear.

The Middle East Peace Process

I do not see any desire in the White House to push for a major diplomatic initiative – the sense there is as far as Netanyahu and Palestinian President Abbas go it’s “a plague on both your houses.”

Obama does not believe that Abbas is willing to take risks for peace. Indeed, there is a fair amount of anger at Abbas for having refused to engage seriously and for walking away from the American framework agreement about a year and a half ago. Even his closest friends in the administration like Susan Rice were extremely angry about that. The US will continue to be involved in conflict management and trying to work with America’s allies like Jordan and Israel to calm the situation down on the Temple Mount. Unless that situation deteriorates very seriously I don’t think you will see any major new diplomatic initiative. There will of course be a rhetorical difference of emphasis between Netanyahu and Obama on the peace process. Netanyahu will talk about the incitement to violence that has been going on the Palestinian side and the fabrication of stories on Israeli policies regarding the Temple Mount. On the other side, Obama will no doubt emphasise that it’s in Israel’s own best interests to move the peace process forward and to be far more circumspect when it comes to settlements.

Both of them will be seeking to make the headlines about the strength and the robustness of the special relationship after the Iran deal rather than looking for another fight.

Potential activities at the UN and internationalising the conflict

Before the Iran deal, there was a sense that the Americans might allow some resolution aiming to put some sort of timetable for a two-state solution to pass the UN General Assembly. I think that the American wiliness for that to happen will have gone down.

The Americans in general oppose the Palestinian attempts to internationalise the conflict and to achieve their objectives outside of the negotiating framework with Israel. They oppose boycott divestment and sanctions (BDS) and the internationalisation strategy of Abbas, so they would be unwilling to sign off on any resolution that opens the door to a policy which says “if there isn’t a Palestinian state by a certain date then the United Nations will pressure Israel.” That’s not going to happen.

They might be prepared to support resolutions that call on the sides to negotiate, but then the question is: do the Palestinians want that? They don’t actually want to. Netanyahu is the one who is calling for negotiations while the Palestinians don’t want to get into negotiations with him. So it’s unclear what would come of that. I don’t see the Americans being massively keen on this unless they thought that passing some sort of resolution would take the sting out of the escalation of violence.