The situation in the Middle East has spurred a lot of controversy and speculations. The entire world is caught up in the conflict surrounding two very small States with a minimal population – that of Israel and Palestine. However, these two States have the power to keep the entire world on its toes (Murray, 2017). Almost all the States of the world have a viewpoint regarding the situation of Israel in the Middle East and the contemporary world is divided into three groups – one who supports the presence of the Israeli community within the Middle East, one who is against the formation of Israel amidst Arab nations and a third group of States who do not want to have an opinion lest they will be facing criticism from any opposing group of States (Aron, 2018).
This essay seeks to discuss the prevailing situation in Israel and Palestine and it has affected the entire world. The paper will then analyze the importance of Israel to the United States of America and the factors behind this strategic importance. The essay will debate on this issue of whether Israel is indeed strategically important to the United States or whether the dependence of the United States o Israel has been exaggerated. The essay will then conclude with the important position of Israel in the world community. The main focus of this paper is to analyze the significance of the country of Israel to the United States and how far does the United States depend on this small country for maintaining its domineering position in the world.
The region of Middle East has been conflict ridden for many centuries now (Harms & Ferry, 2017). After the end of the First World War, there was a rising tendency among the various nations of the world to concretize their sovereignty. The Jews were scattered all over the world and they felt in need for their own homeland. As such, they started to migrate to Middle East, towards Palestine, which is supposedly the holy land for the Jews. This claim of the Jews on the land of Palestine was backed by the Government of Britain. This is evident from the famous Balfour Declaration which was signed by Britain on 2nd November, 1917 (Yablonka, 2016).
However, this land is also considered to be holy by the Arab countries, since their messiah took his last breathe in the land of Palestine. In the Second World War, there was an attempt to terminate all the Jews in the world, which resulted in the most horrific holocaust ever witnessed by humankind (Gelvin, 2014). This necessitated the Jews to flee to Middle East in order to save themselves. The situation turned grave when the surrounding Arab Nations started to protest against the dominating presence of Jews within the land of Palestine. They felt that Palestine was the rightful land of the Arabs and the Jews had no right to make it their homeland (Baylis, Smith & Owens, 2017). This initial animosity would led to decades’ worth of conflict between the two communities, with horrible repercussions on humanity and property. Millions of people have lost their lives in the on-going war and billions worth of property has been destroyed (Kramer, 2017). Several attempts were made by the international community to reduce the tension between the two countries to a considerable extent. Although a small community with only a few people, Israel somehow always managed to defeat the coalition of the Arab forces. This was so because the Israelis were technologically superior and had the upper hand in the usage of efficient arms armaments and ammunitions. The first attempt was made in 1993, by the way of the Oslo Accords. Israel was represented by Yitzhak Rabin and the Palestine Liberation Organization was represented by Yasser Arafat (Dinstein, 2017).
The major landmark reached in this Peace Process was that the Palestine Liberation Organization gave due recognition to Israel and acknowledged their right to exist within the folds of Middle East. This was done in exchange of Israel’s promise to maintain peace in the region. However, the Peace process was a short loved one when Rabin was assassinated. The new leader of Israel failed to reach that level of understanding as his predecessor and the promised peace was no longer realized within the region. A second attempt to solve the regional crisis was made in 2000 in Camp David (Laqueur & Schueftan, 2016). This was an initiative by the United States to help mitigate the existing conflict in the region for the sake of humanity. The persisting conflict led to the rise of many fundamentalist and extremist groupings who did not believe in the concept of peace for achieving their objectives. Camp David also failed to achieve the desired target and for the next two decades the region has been caught in a deadlock, neither country is ready to compromise, necessitating the continuation of the conflict and resistance.
The United States always had a vested interest in the region of Middle East (Fisher, 2015). Many countries of the international community has questioned the interest of the United States in the region. The United States has made some significant contribution in the region by the way of providing food rations, medical aid, supplying huge consignments of arms and ammunition. This has sparked an international debate on the issue of the involvement of the United States in the region (Heller, 2016). The supply of armaments in the region has deep resonating consequences for the rebel groups. They misuse the armaments for the purposes of hurting the innocent civilians instead of targeting the agency of the State. This has adversely affected the region as a whole.
The main interest of the United States in the region lies in the fact that this region is very rich in oil resources and natural gas. If the United States can control a significant portion of that oil resources, then it will be able to dictate the prevailing price of oil (Adamsky, 2017). The bilateral relation between the United States and Israel has strengthened over the past decade. The annual incentives paid to Israel has not been debated in the US Congress; it is almost always passed without any kind of trouble. This aid is questioned by many other countries of the world who feel that instead of being used for humanitarian reasons, the financial aid is used by the military to buy more armament and ammunition (Jamal, 2017). The United States, on the other hand maintains that the financial support given is for reconstruction purposes and for humanitarian aid.
This nexus between the United States and Israel has not always been in existence (Charles, 2017). The United States initially followed a policy of isolationism, for which it is widely known. It was only when the Israel managed to defeat all the combinations of the Arab army, than it agreed to send help to Israel. Initially, Israel was a small country which was viewed with suspicions by many nations of the world. They felt that the Israelis had no right to establish their home in the land of someone else who were living their prior to the settlement of the Jews (Landau, J. M., Ozbudun & Tachau, 2015). However, the Jews had no place else to go and in spite of attraction international condemnation, the Jews decided to establish their home in the lad of Palestine. Ever since that time, in the mid twentieth century, the various Arab nations of the world have tried to displace the Jews from their homeland. They did not give the due recognition to the land of Israel, instead believing that it simply a coercive occupation of the land. As such, most of the Arab nations came under the same banner and decided to launch an attack on the Jews (Baylis, Smith & Owens, 2017).
The following wars has severe repercussions on humanity, especially the Jews and the Arab. During this time, Jews almost had no help from any of the members of the international community as they believed that it was an internal crisis which had to be solved by the Jews and Arabs by themselves. Even the United States decided to isolate itself. It was not until the end of the 1967 war when the Jews managed to convince the world that they were here to stay in Palestine for the indefinite future, that the international community started to take an interest (Jongejan, 2018). The United States realized that the Jews were much stronger than they looked; they were capable of handling an Arab coalition by themselves. This was highly commendable since the Arab armies were in much larger in size than the Jewish army. The sheer number of armed forces of the Arab coalition was daunting. In spite of that, the Jews were able to defeat the opposing armed forces every single time they launched an attack and they managed to emerge victorious (Oren, 2017). This is what gained the attention of the United States. The leaders of the United States realized that Israel had the potential to hold their own within the region and was rapidly emerging as the significant power in the entire Middle East. This was seen as an opportunity by the United States to ally with the Israel and establish their dominance in the Middle East region with help from Israel. This marked the beginning of the United States Israel strategic bilateral relationship (Baylis, Smith & Owens, 2017).
Israel became a strategic partner for the United States because of its dominating position in the Middle East region and the significant control of oil reserves. From 1950s to 1960s, the United States provided minimal support to the Jewish people, in terms of providing medical aid and food rations for humanitarian purposes (Achcar & Warschawski, 2015). There was no intention to help Israel from a political aspect. It as purely for the protection of human rights and protecting the citizens of the Middle East region. The War of 1967 had a deep impact on the region (Landau, 2015). It was the time when the Cold War was at its peak and the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in a number of proxy wars. Although, there was not any on-going proxy war in the region of Middle East, the United States was afraid that should a full scale war break out in the region, both the Soviet Union and the United States would be forcefully drawn into the war. When the war broke out in 1967, the United States was disappointed as it felt that had Israel compromised, a war could have been avoided (Shain et al., 2015).
The United States realized that both the countries – Israel and United States – had some similarity in cultural ideology (Flamhaft, 2018). Both of them believed in the concept of liberal ideology which gives a free reign to the private players to establish their business and follow their own guidelines which will help them to earn a higher share of revenue. The United States has always been an advocator of the democratic framework of the social structure and it has a self-given mission to structure the social structure of the various polities of the world in accordance with its image of democracy and liberalism (Reich & Powers, 2018).
Moreover, the United States always had a problem with the Islamic fundamentalism prevalent in the Middle East. The Arab countries followed the principles of Quran, which are not in favor of the capitalist structure of society (Fawcett, 2016). The widespread violation of human rights within the region, greatly causes discomfort to the United States who believe in the absolute freedom of all human beings. The women of the Middle East are considered to be half of that of man and their rights are severely restricted by the State. The United States fears the spread of radical Islamist ideology to other parts of the world (Baylis, Smith & Owens, 2017). This is one area of contention between the Middle East region and the United States and the United States hopes to have an influence in the region through Israel. Israel would provide the much needed platform to the United States to structure the economically most important part of the world in the image of its favored capitalism. This is one of the factors because of which Israel has emerge as a strategic partner to the United States.
However, the dependence on Israel for the United States has been too exaggerated (Sutter, 2015). The United States is the most powerful State in the world in the contemporary times. Although many scholars believe that the modern world is a multipolar power structure with many polities holding the same level of power, it is still the United States which acts as the hegemon of the world. The United States has a greater say in the various forums of the world, such as the United Nation (Baylis, Smith & Owens, 2017). The other States of the world usually follow the suggestions and advices of the United States lest they should be facing economic sanctions imposed on them by the United States. The country has a wider prevalence that it accounts for and its presence in the Middle East despite international criticism is evidence to that (Baylis, Smith & Owens, 2017). The United States do not need to use Israel as a strategic partner in order to enforce its position to control the oil reserves. It has the potential to sway the other concerned nations of the world to follow its dictates. However, this age is an age of peace and negotiations (Baylis, Smith & Owens, 2017). The nations prefer to talk and negotiate with each other rather than going to war. The United States is following this principle in order to protect the innocent civilians who would otherwise lose their lives in the event of a full scale war.
To conclude, it is observed that the presence of the united States in the region of Middle East is doing harm than good. The financial aid provided by the country to Israel is being diverted to the fundamentalist groupings in the region who are only trying to stir up more conflict in the region. The various fundamentalist groups follow extremist Islamist ideology and they believe that peace can only be won with the help of violence. They justify the use of violence by advocating that the violence caused in the name of peace will be forgiven by their God. This has ravaged the region of Middle East because of the constant bombings of various cities and towns and the killings of innocent civilians. The strategic partnership between Israel and the United States for the motive of having greater control over the oil reserves of the Middle East region and for instituting the democratic framework of political structure is having serious negative impact on the region. It will prove to be better if the United States gave up on its desires in the Middle East region.
References:
Achcar, G., & Warschawski, M. (2015). 33 Day War: Israel’s War on Hezbollah in Lebanon and Its Consequences. Routledge.
Adamsky, D. (2017). From Israel with Deterrence: Strategic Culture, Intra-war Coercion and Brute Force. Security Studies, 26(1), 157-184.
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Baylis, J., Smith, S., & Owens, P. (Eds.). (2017). The globalization of world politics: an introduction to international relations. Oxford University Press.
Charles, D. (2017). Can Israel Survive Without America?.
Dinstein, Y. (2017). War, aggression and self-defence. Cambridge University Press.
Fawcett, L. (2016). International relations of the Middle East. Oxford University Press.
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Jamal, A. (2017). In the shadow of the 1967 war: Israel and the Palestinians. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 44(4), 529-544.
Jongejan, J. C. (2018). Redeeming the Promised Land: An analysis of the popularity of religious Zionism in Israel after the Yom Kippur War (Master’s thesis).
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