The Enemy of My Ally

And What to Do When My Ally Is Its Own Worst Enemy?

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” or so runs an old Arab proverb. The United States has followed this philosophy in our Middle East foreign policy more than once and usually to our eventual chagrin.

We once allied ourselves, at least informally, with Osama Bin Laden and Afghan militants when their war of resistance was draining the Soviet Union of money, arms, and soldiers’ lives near the end of the Cold War. Likewise, Saddam Hussein seemed a darn good ally when he went to war with Iran in the wake of that nation taking hostage some of our citizens.

Another more pragmatic dictum holds that the enemy of my ally is my enemy too. This was the basis for drawing the United States into two World Wars during the Twentieth Century, fortunately on the right and winning sides each time. It continues to be practiced by us without much concern.

It is certainly the basis of our long standing and strongly held alliance with Israel. The U.S. has attempted to negotiate peace between Israel and the Palestinians as an impartial broker and joined the plethora of other countries calling for an independent Palestinian homeland. In spite of this, we acknowledge a friendship with Israel that we do not share with the Palestinian Authority, the representative of Palestinians within the West Bank. We have actual enmity with Hamas, which represents Palestinians within the Gaza Strip.

What is the basis for our stout support of Israel? It rests on the fact that Israel is a democracy, a nuclear power, and unafraid to use force to defend itself. Conventional wisdom also says that Israel is friendly toward and supportive of the United States.

Vice-President Joe Biden might have some stinging counterarguments to make on this last point.

Badly in need of a foreign policy accomplishment, the Obama Administration’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, announced Monday that Israel and the Palestinians had both agreed to begin indirect, American-brokered talks. The U.S. had pushed the Arab League to push the Palestinian Authority to the table. Vice-President Biden immediately jetted to Israel to promote negotiations.

Upon landing, Biden spoke of U.S./Israeli relations in the most glowing terms. The relationship between the two allies, Biden told reporters, has always been a “centerpiece of American policy. Progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there is simply no space between the United States and Israel. The United States will always stand with those who take risks for peace. [Israel is] prepared to do that.”

On the very same day, the Israeli Interior Ministry, run by Shas, an ultra-Orthodox nationalist Party, took a not-so-peaceful risk by announcing plans to build sixteen hundred new homes in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo, increasing its Jewish population by more than half.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to a ten month freeze for new housing construction within the West Bank back in November. However, east Jerusalem was considered off the table. Moreover, Israeli officials insisted the project had been approved before the moratorium went into effect.

U.S. officials understood and even tacitly agreed to the exemption for Jerusalem. However, the announcement coming with Biden in country was considered a major embarrassment for America. It certainly made all the difference in Biden’s language.

“The substance and timing of the announcement, particularly with the launching of proximity talks, is precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now,” he told reporters tersely that evening. “We must build an atmosphere to support negotiations, not complicate them.”

The strong link between the U.S. and Israel were gone in Biden’s remarks the next day at Tel Aviv University. Instead, the “United States pledges to play an active as well as a sustainable role in these talks,” Biden promised. He stressed the Palestinians deserved an independent state that is “viable and contiguous.”

Netanyahu insisted he was “blindsided” by the announcement, a contention that only made him appear incompetent as opposed to indifferent. Despite the awkwardness, the U.S. and Israel remained committed to going forward with talks. The Palestinian Authority and the rest of the Arab World expressed grave doubts.

Yet another old Arab proverb says, “A fool may be known by six things – anger without cause, speech without profit, change without progress, inquiry without object, putting trust in a stranger, and mistaking foes for friends.” It seems unsurprising that the Palestinians hesitate to trust the U.S. or recognize us as friends, given our seemingly unconditional support for Israel.

As for Israel, what makes us so committed to friendship with them? Many note Israel’s strategic importance in the oil rich Middle East, pointing out they are the only country in the region friendly to us, with Arab/Islamic nations full of violent anti-American sentiments. Yet this ignores that a chief complaint of these Arab/Islamic critics is our unwarranted (at least in their minds) support of Israel.

What is worse, despite undeniable Arab hostility toward it, there is a growing realization that Israel’s worst enemy may actually be itself.

The National, an English language newspaper published in the United Arab Emirates, recently condemned Israel in an editorial for “getting closer by the day to pariah status, not because of some international conspiracy or thoughtless anti-Semitic passions but because of its own actions. Its intransigence on settlements and peace with the Palestinians is met with increasing frustration and disbelief abroad. Even in the U.S., the voices urging Israel to wake up and smell the coffee are no longer on the margins.”

Granted, an Arab newspaper may be questioned for impartiality but they are far from alone.

Alan Hart, author and a correspondent for ITN and the BBC, writes, “It has long been my view that Israel is its own worst enemy . . . it’s obvious that more and more so-called ordinary people of the world are becoming outraged by the Zionist state’s arrogance of power, its contempt for international law and, most of all, its brutal repression of the Palestinians.”

Haroon Siddiqui notes in the Toronto Star, “Israel has ended up with the exact opposite of what it wanted . . . Israel either does not want peace, as its critics claim, or it does but by dictating terms to a pliant partner.”

Even Avrum Rosenseweig of Haaretz laments, “We were not a violent people. We never danced and sang while our foes suffered. When did we become our [own worst] enemy?”

If the U.S. practices the policy that the enemy of our ally is our enemy and Israel really is its own worst enemy, then does that make Israel our ally or our enemy? Yes, it is silly semantics but the question may be worth more serious consideration.

Netanyahu and the conservatives would like nothing better than to deflect U.S. attention away from the Palestinian issue and re-focus it on Iran. Israel has been pushing for stricter international sanctions targeting Iran’s nuclear program and has refused to rule out a military strike if sanctions fail. When Biden talks about “no space between the United States and Israel,” many see that as code to mean the U.S. would not allow the Arab/Muslim World to retaliate against Israel for such a strike.

Maybe that is not such a good idea. Maybe the U.S. would do better to simply sit back and let Israel reap the full outcomes of its actions if it insists on dictating direction. Conventional wisdom would regard such an outcome as a tragedy. Maybe we ought to regard it instead as a win-win. Maybe there are cases when the enemy of my ally can be my friend and my enemy as well. Now there is a novel approach to dealing with the Middle East. It all depends on the ally, I guess.