Americas Middle East policy Israel first
America’s Middle East policy: Israel first
SHANGHAI - It is rarely disagreed that protecting Israel has stayed a top priority of U.S. policy toward the region. However, very few would have predicted that U.S. pro-Israel policy could go so far as what is demonstrated in the latest round of the Israel-Palestine conflict. And countries in the region have been compliant with the U.S. for different considerations. But recent moves like Trump’s proposal to relocate Palestinians to Egypt and Jordan suggested that compromise is not well rewarded. Countries in the region should learn the lesson that compromise is never a solution.
Scholars across the world have created piles of literature on America’s policy toward the Middle East as the U.S. has been playing a very critical role in the region as an external actor, sometimes as the sole most influential actor in regional affairs.
As a scholar working on Middle East issues, I also used to spend my time working on the pre-assumed diversified dynamics behind U.S. policy toward the region. But when I talked about my research topic with a very senior leading American scholar in 2013, who was not working on Middle East issues, the very American professor complained in a very angry tone that America’s policy in the region can be categorized as three words: “Israel”, “Israel” and “Israel”.
Though knowing about America’s pro-Israel policy, I was shocked by such categorization of an American professor, and I was then even doubting whether the professor was too emotional about U.S. policy as a result of his personal dissatisfaction about the overuse of America’s strategic and economic resources on Israel. I then even believed that a superpower, which labeled itself as the leader of the international community, could not just have one consideration about its policy in such an important region.
Though the professor might not have sufficient background knowledge as he was not a scholar on Middle East studies, he might be one of those American scholars who delivered the most objective understanding about U.S. policy in this regard. The reason could be simply that his personal disengagement with the region had made him more objective.
According to statistics, the U.S. has provided assistance worth more than $260 billion for Israel in the last seven decades. Also, the U.S. has vetoed almost all the resolutions condemning Israel’s occupation and military actions against Palestinians and this has made Israel evade any responsibility for its atrocities. The U.S. has supported Israel in its military buildup, which has made Israel able to maintain its military superiority over Palestine and its Arab neighbors.
U.S. partiality toward Israel since the Al-Aqsa Flood has gone even beyond the imagination in the modern world. The last sixteen months have seen that more than 40 thousand Palestinian Gazans have lost their lives in Israel’s military operations, and nearly 200 thousand people have lost their lives as a result of starvation, lack of medical treatment, and other poor living conditions. What happened in Gaza is a disaster in terms of humanitarianism and humanity. While turning blind eyes and deaf ears to the disasters, the U.S. has been consistently providing military assistance to the perpetrator and political shelter as well.
What is even more beyond imagination is Trump’s latest proposal that the U.S. will take over Gaza and develop real estate while relocating Gazans to Egypt and Jordan. Though the U.S. could not necessarily achieve the goal as the proposal is far below the bottom line of neighboring Arab countries, this has fully demonstrated America’s mentality of blatant robbery of the legal and legitimate properties of a nation, who have been there for millenniums.
Judging by Trump’s efforts in his first presidential term to legitimatize Israel’s occupation of territories, it is predicted that the U.S. under Trump’s administration will further recognize the territorial and security interests that Israel had gained in Palestine and neighboring areas as well.
The Middle East, as a result of the spillover of the Al-Aqsa Flood, is seeing a profound change of regional order. The order will manifest itself in different facets, and different regional and extra-regional actors are competing for future arrangements in their own favor. The most obvious one will be Israel’s efforts to obtain America’s support to achieve its regional hegemony with maximized territorial and security interests. In addition, Israel will try to normalize its relations with more Arab countries while abandoning the two-state solution.
The arrangements in the minds of Israel and the U.S. will undermine not only the legitimate cause of the Palestinian nation’s hood but also regional stability. Palestinians will be plunged into more desperate situations as they will face extremely tough situations for survival. Countries in the region could see more domestic turbulence as their political legitimacy will face new challenges as their people will be dissatisfied with the policy of unreasonable compliance of the governments. Egypt and Jordan, two close neighbors, will particularly face pressure from refugees. And the whole region could see more fierce reactions against occupation and deliberate humiliation.
The lessons are bitter, one of which should be that compromise is never a way to solution. For many years, some countries in the region have been seeking for security protection of the U.S., and they have been compliant with requests of the U.S. and Israel for that purpose, but only find that compliance can only result in more and further requests and compliance. And they finally find however compliant they are, they will never be first-class citizens in Americans’ eyes, and they are permanently considered inferior. And then what is the end of compromise?
By the way, albeit persistent pursuit for U.S. security protection, security either at the individual or regional level has never been really achieved as decades of turbulence and instabilities have indicated. America’s security protection is not something existential but elusive.
The lessons are bitter, but will these lessons be learned?
Jin Liangxiang is a Senior Research Fellow at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies
source: tehrantimes.com