A CRISIS IN U.S.-ISRAEL RELATIONS: HAVE WE BEEN HERE BEFORE?
Dore Gold
Jerusalem Issue Brief, April 8, 2010

We are in a period in which the U.S.-Israel relationship appears to be in flux, but it is hard for many observers to establish whether the policies of the Obama administration represent a sharp break in U.S. policy toward Israel or a continuation of past U.S. policies. Will military ties between the two countries be affected?... [I]s it likely that the U.S. and Israel will ultimately resolve their differences, or are the present gaps between the two countries so wide that their long-term relationship will change?

The Neighborhoods of Eastern Jerusalem Were Captured in a War of Self-Defense

The present tensions in U.S.-Israel relations appeared to erupt in response to an Israeli building project in the Jewish neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo in Jerusalem, where 1,600 new apartments were approved by a local zoning board. Ramat Shlomo is one of several Jerusalem neighborhoods that were established in Jerusalem in territories that were captured by Israel as a result of the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel formally extended Israeli law to these parts of its newly united capital.

Formally the U.S. did not recognize the annexation by Israel of the eastern parts of Jerusalem in July 1967. And while past administrations did not support Israeli construction of new neighborhoods, they did not let this issue disrupt the overall U.S.-Israel relationship. Much of the present discord in the relationship is partly attributable to the fact that the background of how Israel entered the eastern parts of Jerusalem has been forgotten. It is important to remember that Israel entered the eastern parts of Jerusalem and the West Bank in what it saw as a war of self-defense.

Factually, Israel only entered these areas after it was attacked, and after it requested that the Jordanians not join the Egyptian war effort. That didn't happen. There were Jordanian artillery attacks throughout Jerusalem and all of Israel. There was movement of Jordanian ground forces into areas that were previously no-man's land, and Israel responded and captured the eastern parts of Jerusalem....

To call for a restoration of the status quo antewould mean that the U.S. backed the return of an illegal situation that was imposed in 1948, which also denied religious freedom. Ultimately, the international community decided not to restore the status quo ante that existed prior to the war, and sought some other kind of outcome, which was reflected in the resolutions and decisions taken with respect to Jerusalem....

Shifting U.S. Policies on Jerusalem

U.S. policy on Jerusalem went through different shifts. Back in 1948, the U.S. was originally committed to the failed internationalization proposals in UN General Assembly Resolution 181. This original position was quickly replaced in the 1950s by acceptance of the 1949 armistice agreements....

In successive administrations, we see that the U.S. did not want the issue of Jerusalem addressed by the UN Security Council, and we see a movement of U.S. policy much closer to the Israeli position. No U.S. administration formally recognized Israel's annexation of Jerusalem in July 1967. Nonetheless, in the past we saw the U.S. and Israel coming to a modus vivendi with respect to Israeli policy in Jerusalem, when Israel built various neighborhoods in the eastern parts of the city....

Ramat Shlomo, the current Jerusalem neighborhood being discussed, was originally begun in 1995 during the period when President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin were in office.... The policies of the Obama administration definitely represent a shift in U.S. policy towards Israel and Jerusalem because of the efforts to have Israel freeze all construction in the eastern parts of the city. The original Oslo Agreements in 1993 do not require a freeze of any kind on construction in Jerusalem. Furthermore, under the Oslo Agreements, Jerusalem was treated as having a completely different status than the West Bank and the city was kept under Israeli control, while seen as an issue for permanent status negotiations in the future. Israel kept building for its residents, just as Palestinian Arabs built for their needs in the areas under their control and elsewhere....

While U.S. administrations have not formally recognized Israel's unification of Jerusalem, back in 1995 the U.S. Congress adopted the Jerusalem Embassy Act by a massive bipartisan majority. It called for the movement of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Equally important, it also acknowledged that Jerusalem must remain united under Israeli sovereignty....

Will the Relationship Recover?

Is it possible for the U.S.-Israel relationship to recover from the recent tensions? If history is any guide, we have had such problems at different times in the past and we have recovered each time.... The United States and Israel have been tied by mutual strategic interests for many years, and those interests will eventually trump the differences that we're seeing today. The major strategic interest that both countries share is the threat of Iran. The Iranian nuclear program is advancing steadily towards a point where it will cross the nuclear threshold in a military sense. Therefore, the restoration of U.S.-Israel cooperation and understanding is probably a greater imperative today than it ever was in the past....

There is one caveat to the idea that U.S.-Israel relations will get back on track in the near future. It is possible to discern a growing view, which has been reported in the Washington Post, that the Obama administration intends to put on the table its own plan for Middle East peace, based on a nearly full Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 lines, that most Israeli planners view as militarily indefensible. As the Palestinians see this scenario unfold, their incentive to re-enter negotiations will decline as they look forward to the prospect that an American peace plan will be imposed. An Obama plan for a complete Israeli retreat of this sort would not only deny the Jewish state "defensible borders," but would also divide Jerusalem, placing the Old City and its holy sites within Palestinian jurisdiction.

If indeed there is such a plan being prepared, then the recent U.S.-Israel tensions over construction in east Jerusalem may only be Act I in a much longer drama that the two countries are about to face.... [S]hould [Obama] indeed advance a new division of Jerusalem, then in the months ahead the U.S. and Israel will be facing a serious crisis in their relationship, just as the military threats from Iran can be expected to worsen.

(Ambassador Dore Gold, President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, was the eleventh Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations (1997-1999).)