EDITORIAL: Changing Middle-Eastern climate may have impact on Israeli relations
Ever since Israel’s formation in 1948, the United States has been its most staunch and unfaltering ally.
America has provided economic and military aid to the state through decades of strife, attacks and counterattacks on the young nation.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should recall how much of his nation’s sovereignty is owed to American aid the next time he criticizes our president, considering Israel receives about $3 billion annually in direct military aid from the U.S., according to the New York Times.
Israel and Netanyahu have every right to critique and disagree with President Barack Obama and the U.S., but when Netanyahu uncordially shot down Obama’s suggestions for future Israeli and Palestinian states based off of 1967 borders established before the occupation of territory not recognized by the United Nations, he threatened a bond he should treasure.
He tempered those statements during a Tuesday speech to Congress about his country’s willingness to make sacrifices, but the issue is still unresolved.
There is no expectation of a simple and mutually beneficial return to what was at least as unstable of a Middle Eastern situation compared to the current one, but Netanyahu must recognize that the political climate of the region is changing.
Even though bipartisan efforts have kept support for Israel nearly unilateral in Congress, the political climate that led to this treasured alliance has changed significantly.
Israel’s democracy will hopefully find its once-lonely vigil joined by republics formed by Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and others as a result of the tide of protests sweeping Northeastern Africa and the Middle East.
The threat of encroaching communism in the form of Soviet-backed Arab states baring down on the beacon of freedom and self-determination no longer exists.
The Jewish people deserved compensation and security after the horrors they suffered in World War II, and centuries of discrimination before that. But the Palestinians residing in Israeli-occupied territory or forced to relocate from it have just as much right to be recognized.
Though the region is an ancestral home for the Jewish people, a long history of conquest since then has also made it one for many other groups whose interests and rights must be equally considered.
The simple truth is that unilateral backing of any nation or people, including Israel or Palestine, does not make sense for America.
George Washington himself advised that “permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded” in his 1796 farewell address.
Netanyahu should not take offense and instead respect Obama's consideration of the possibility of placing other interests before Israel’s own, instead of disregarding those ideas as unfeasible. He should, at the very least, entertain those ideas and set an example of pragmatism in an area often wrought with conflict.
