Normalization of U.S.–Israeli Relations is Globally Urgent

Perhaps the time has come to seriously ask ourselves why, despite the tremendous efforts and prodigious energy spent towards normalizing relations between Israel and the Arab countries, no concrete results have been achieved. Worse still, the situation is deteriorating more and more each day, so much so that even the most optimistic observers are beginning to discern the clouds of war on the dark Middle Eastern horizon and are no longer hiding their fear of a regional conflict with unpredictable consequences for the world. How did we come to this point?

Naturally, the reason that has been analyzed, pointed at, underlined, pondered and ruminated over for decades is that Israel is a special country that does not recognize the legal framework or the moral barriers that regulate the behavior of members of the international community. A special country that occupies the land of others, starts wars when and where it pleases without being held accountable for its actions, much less being punished or penalized.

There is a popular Arabic saying that goes, “Pharaoh, why do you rage? Because there is no one to hold me back!” The question that arises is why do we expect Israel, who finds itself in the same situation as the proverbial Pharaoh, to behave any differently, that is to hold itself back? Here is a country that has the unique privilege of being able to impose its whims on the greatest world power and stand up to its presidents, a country that humiliates a visiting vice president, intimidates representatives and senators, exacts from the American taxpayers what can only be called an annual tax of $3 million despite having a higher standard of living than that of many European countries, a country that collects as many vetoes as it needs on the Security Council, that essentially enjoys total compliance from the most powerful country in the world and yet refuses to observe even the most basic recommendation coming from them, namely a temporary freeze on its settlements. One must be extremely naïve or completely mad to expect Israel to give up of its own accord so inordinate a privilege, which probably has no precedent in the entire history of international relations.

Getting back to the question of the normalization of Arab-Israeli relations, it must be said that it has failed for a very simple reason: we put the cart before the horse. In other words, we believed a normalization of the relations between Israel and the Arab world was possible before the normalization of those between Israel and the United States. No solution is possible in the Middle East; no peace will come to the region as long as U.S.–Israeli relations are affected by such considerable anomalies.

For those anomalies not only affect relations with enemy states but also with partner states where, as in the case of Israel and the U.S., the friendship has turned into a pathological relationship in which one party has become a slave to the other, indulging its every whim and jeopardizing not only the interests of both countries but also world peace. It is this pathological love between the two nations that has been tarnishing their reputation for so many years and makes them appear to international observers, including Western Europeans, as the two main sources of instability and the two fundamental causes of the biblical misfortunes of the Middle East. It is plain to see that without this pathological love that has forced Washington to support Israel’s every folly for 43 years, the face of the region would be very different than what it is today. We would have had much less conflict and destruction, much less hate and spite, much fewer refugees and displaced, dead, wounded and maimed people.

Any significant ease of the tension in the Middle East, sine qua non of any serious negotiation and lasting solution, will have to result first and foremost from a normalization of U.S.–Israeli relations. In other words, the treatment of this pathological love that has spiraled excessively out of proportion during the visit of Vice President Joe Biden to Israel has become strategically urgent for the world. It is not overstating to say that peace and stability worldwide depend to a large extent on an adjustment of the relations between Tel Aviv and Washington. How? Very simply by treating Israel like any other U.S. partner country and by putting an end once and for all to this outrageous privilege that the Israeli diplomacy has claimed for themselves. Without this prerequisite, all negotiations, direct or indirect, and all the efforts undertaken by the most expert diplomats will lead nowhere, as is widely demonstrated by the amount of time and energy that has been wasted over the last four decades.

The last we heard, President Obama was “red with anger” and Mrs. Clinton had had a furious 43-minute phone conversation with Benjamin Netanyahu, who with his usual arrogance apologized for the “timing” of the announcement of the new Jewish settlements but did not comment on the substance of the issue. Another President, Bill Clinton, had also been “red with anger” at Netanyahu before, in 1996, and another Secretary of State had been furious with Yitzhak Shamir in 1991. Those were passing furies and angers, before Israel regained the upper hand, with the disastrous consequences that we know. The normalization of U.S.–Israeli relations will not happen through verbal furies but through calmly and carefully thought-out decisions. It will not happen through flash in the pan angry outbursts but through reasonable, fair and logical actions on which regional peace and global stability depend.

In less than two weeks, we will know whether or not the United States is willing to treat this malignant anomaly. Indeed, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is holding its annual conference in Washington in a few days, where Mrs. Hillary Clinton has been invited to deliver a speech. It will certainly not be the easiest speech the staff of the department of State has ever had to compose.