The United States and Israel ― The Limits of the Special Relationship

The recent discord between the United States and Israel over loan guarantees has focused attention on the forty-year conflict between those who advocate nurturing the "special relationship" between the two countries and those who favor the use of coercive measures to influence Israeli behavior. Amid this complex diplomatic panorama, Abraham Ben-Zvi reconstructs the often tension-filled American-Israeli relationship as it has unfolded since 1953, when President Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles first attempted to coerce Israel into changing its policy in order to accommodate itself to American foreign policy interests.
Ben-Zvi examines the extent to which the application of various coercive measures by the United States between 1953 and 1991 proved effective and how they were often modified, sometimes even nullified by the advocates of the special relationship, which included not only pro-Israel lobbying groups but also many members of the U.S. Congress. Included is a group of significant case studies: the B'Not Ya'acov Water crisis of 1953; the Sinai crisis of 1956-57; the "Reassessment" crisis of 1975; the Superpower crisis of 1977; the "sanctions" crisis of 1981; the Lebanon crisis of 1982; and the Palestinian crisis of 1990.
Ben-Zvi also shows how former Prime Minister Shamir's decision to build settlements in the occupied territories aggravated an already tense situation between the U.S. and Israel, and he concludes with comments on the Gulf War and the return to power of the Labor Party in 1992.
In The United States and Israel the author argues that the U.S.-Israeli relationship has been altered since 1990 because of changes in the level of American public sympathy toward Israel and the demise of the Cold War, which significantly reduced the role of Israel as a "strategic asset" for the United States.
With the relationship between the two countries constantly in flux, Ben-Zvi believes that the stage has been set for American diplomats to resort to a more assertive posture in the Arab-Israeli sphere.

Abraham Ben-Zvi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and a Senior Researcher at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel-Aviv University.