U.S.-Arab Ties Grow Stronger in Tandem with Strong U.S.-Israeli Ties

President Obama’s Middle East policy is taking on the hallmarks of the traditional Arabist school of thought that holds that strong U.S.-Israel ties hurt relations with the Arab states. This is evident, for example, by his determination to pick a fight with Israel over settlements, focus most of his attention on cultivating ties with the Arab states, and argue that it is necessary to resolve the Palestinian issue to get the Arab states to cooperate on the Iranian nuclear problem.

Over the last 60 years, U.S.-Israel relations have grown stronger in parallel with an improvement in U.S.-Arab ties, which one would think would have discredited the Arabist view. Nevertheless, the pull of the idea that all will be well if we would just abandon Israel has remained.

The State Department’s approach for the last six decades has been to seek a peace agreement between Israel and the Arabs based on the premises that the Arabs will not compromise and that the U.S. should use Israel’s dependency on American support as leverage to force it to make concessions demanded by the Arabs. The Director of the Office for Near Eastern Affairs in the Eisenhower Administration, G. Lewis Jones, put the department view succinctly in 1958: “These ideas are based on the assumption that Israel needs peace more than do the Arab states, and that it would be Israel, not the Arabs, who would have to make concessions in order to obtain this peace, given the present Arab determination not to come to a settlement with Israel.” Then, as now, Israel was reluctant to listen to American diplomats “on the grounds that this would indicate weakness and only serve to whet the appetite of the Arabs for more concessions.”

What makes the Arabist position so perfidious is the insistence on Israeli concessions knowing they will make no difference to the Arabs. As Jones admitted, “We have no assurance that the steps, if taken, would result in counter steps by the Arabs in the direction of better relations with Israel.”

An example of the absurdity of the State Department’s position occurred after the 1956 war when Saudi Arabia complained that Israeli ships were interfering with pilgrims to Mecca. It was a lie; nevertheless, Israel agreed to tie up its naval vessels to placate the Americans and Saudis, Still, the Arabists wanted the ships to be removed from the Gulf altogether. When the Israelis asked if complying with the American request would influence the Saudi king’s attitude, a State Department official candidly replied that he didn’t believe it would alter the Saudi position at all, but he still felt Israel should do it for the sake of regional stability. This was classic State Department logic: Israel must make concessions the diplomats know will not affect any change in Arab policies or opinions simply because the Arabs demand them.

More than 50 years later, the State Department policy is unchanged though it sometimes is now described as “realist” rather than Arabist. The belief remains that Israel must make concessions without any evidence the Arabs will reciprocate. In fact, the response of the Arabs to Obama’s pronouncements so far has been outright defiance, bluntly saying they have no intention of taking any steps toward peace with Israel.

Meanwhile, Arab-Israeli peace is irrelevant to the Iranian nuclear issue. The Arab states know that solving the Palestinian issue will do nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring a bomb. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak exposed the fallacy of the Arabist policy when he told the Arab summit in March, “A nuclear armed Iran with hegemonic ambitions is the greatest threat to Arab nations today.”

Obama is getting bad advice from advisers who Francis Fukuyama observed “have been more systematically wrong than any other area specialists in the diplomatic corps.” He should seek wiser counsel before he goes too far down a path that has a 60-year record of failure.