The Deathly Waltz That Is US-Israel Ties

The iconic political philosopher Plato was always wary of democracy, especially its mad ending. The run-up to the US election, before Joe Biden stepped down, presented the choice of his senility up against Donald Trump’s insanity. With Kamala Harris entering the race, there seemed to be an initial momentum on her side, especially as her campaign raised massive funds. Now as the US election is nearing, and the race to the White House between Trump and Harris keeps narrowing, there is only one thing that can be said with any degree of certainty. Irrespective of the outcome, US commitment towards Israel and its war in Gaza and Lebanon will remain unimaginatively unflinching.

A slavishness now characterises the US commitment towards Israel, which is a significant change in this most special of relationships between the two countries. This bodes ill for Israel in the future as one looks into the distance of the next decade. The reason for this is simple. Levels of Israeli aggression have been made logistically and militarily possible by the backing of the US at the forefront of the West, with the UK and Germany following in unquestioning lockstep. The UK has always been that most faithful of US sidekicks and its material involvement in the current Israeli aggression has been noteworthy. Almost half (47 per cent) of 1,600 reconnaissance flights have been undertaken by the UK, according to an Al Jazeera report, which suggests that this is part of a larger ‘‘air bridge’’ of 6,000 military flights provided by the US and the UK that has been vital in sustaining Israel’s prolonged military aggression.

The supposedly special relationship between the UK and the US was always one of those ideas that boosted flagging UK egos as the British empire faded into distant memory. It was best captured by the former West German Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, when he famously quipped that the relationship was so special that only one side knew it existed. The even more special relationship between the US and Israel will prove to be a deathly embrace for the two as Israel has forced the US to overcommit itself to Israeli atrocities. Israeli military capabilities, despite the formidable nature of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), are insignificant on their own, without the gargantuan backing of the US-led West.

According to analysts from Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, in the one year that has elapsed since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks alone, the US has given $17.9 billion in military aid to Israel. Viewed on a graph, that is almost a vertical gradient and intriguingly does not seem to trouble the average US taxpayer in times of extreme economic difficulty. The special relationship between the US and Israel at the moment is one that looks extremely one-sided as Israel keeps getting its way, in large measure due to the presence of the lobbying prowess of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The current state of lop-sidedness in this special relationship will end up harming both. The hegemonic dominance of the US cannot go on forever. As ever clearer signs emerge of fading US hegemony, Israel will really need to assess how it can and will conduct itself in its neighbourhood.

There are two strands of thought about how Israel will go on conducting itself with its neighbours. One is the “river to the sea” argument, which is actually contained in the Likud Party’s 1977 manifesto, even though talking heads in the Western media keep interrogating Palestinian sympathisers with the accusation that their use of the phrase indicates genocidal intent of eliminating Israel. This idea suggests that from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea, there will be space only for Israel with no Palestinian Gaza and the West Bank completely settled as Judea and Samaria. The second strand of thought is even more outrageous and is entertained by the more egregiously right-wing elements of the Israeli polity, even as politics in that country anyway keeps moving in that very dire direction. This conceptualises a greater Israel from the “river to the river”, the Nile to the Euphrates, incorporating the Sinai Peninsula, large parts of Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. Official US policy has always shown a notional commitment to a two-state solution. It is difficult to see the next US administration, either a Trump one or a Harris one, sustaining such an untenable idea.

The Inconsequential US Election

By forcing the hand of the US in terms of its uncritical and slavish backing, Israel has itself become the herald of diminishing US hegemony. Israel as a client state has effected quite the role reversal. The pathetic nature of US democracy is evident from the constricted political non-choice between the Democrat Harris and the Republican Trump, which cannot move the dial of US foreign policy that is so stubbornly stuck in its lodestar- like fixation with Israel. It is neither in Israel’s interest nor US interest for both countries to continue on the path they have been going down. In Israel’s case, this has been the massive military rampage, initially in Gaza and then in Lebanon. In the US’ case, its blind imprimatur on everything Israel does. The deathly embrace of this special relationship between Israel and the US is an outcome of the deliberately badly designed Abraham Accords. This was sold by the Trump administration as a US-backed deal to ‘normalise’ relations between Israel and Arab states like the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Morocco. Its deliberate design was taking the Palestine issue off the agenda. The aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attacks has put the Palestinian issue right back at the centre of the agenda.

Israel and its ‘Neighbours’

In a debate in late September this year at New York, the former Israeli spokesperson Eylon Levy expressed Israel’s supposed worries over the troubled plight of its Palestinian ‘neighbours’. His opponent, the British-American journalist Mehdi Hasan corrected him by saying that the Palestinians are not their neighbours, but people Israel colonises. Israel does not seem to realise that a flourishing existence in the region can only be brought about if it casts its lot with its neighbours. This was the sagely advice that Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius gave when he suggested: “Adapt yourself to the environment in which your lot has been cast, and show true love to the fellow mortals with whom destiny has surrounded you.” Israel cannot cast its lot with its ‘neighbours’ as long as it refuses to declare where its borders end and where those of its ‘neighbours’, especially Palestinian ones, begin.

Shifting Lines in the Sand and Red Lines of Infinite Regress

Whatever comes out of the current war in the Middle East, it is certain that the map of the region will inevitably be re-drawn. The current borders that created entities like Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Israel/Palestine are ‘lines in the sand’ drawn by the secretly concluded Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916, just a year before the 1917 Balfour Declaration. The turbulent political sandstorms the region is passing through will alter the transience of Sykes-Picot, which may be over a hundred years old, but is a mere blink in the historical eye.

Another line that keeps rapidly receding is the red line that the US keeps drawing to supposedly deter the escalation of Israeli military actions, but which is actually an exercise in disingenuity. The course of the over year-long war has seen the US draw one red line after the other, only for Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu to breach every one of them, each time even more flagrantly. These US red lines are lines of infinite regress that draw back with every Israeli breach. They are indicative of a declining US hegemony and will go on drawing back and diminish to a point into which US hegemony will implode in on itself. It will be the US-Israel special relationship that may well bring this about. This reinforces the point that the US-Israel special relationship is a macabre deathly dance that has created a necropolis out of Gaza and Lebanon and can do nothing but end itself in an orgy of meaningless nihilism.

The absurdity of US democracy, and specifically the 2024 presidential election, lies in the fact that it cannot stop the crazy waltz of Trump and Harris. This is a democratic waltz committed to the continuation of whatever Israel and Netanyahu demand. It cannot dance to its own tune, but the loony one set by Israel and Netanyahu. How much the US has fallen from its high places, will be manifest in these presidential elections. “How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle”, was the lament of David in the Bible.

(Views expressed are personal)

Amir Ali teaches at the Centre for Political Studies, JNU, New Delhi

(This appeared in the print as 'The Deathly Waltz')