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Foreign Affairs
The Ties That Bind: Americans, Arabs, and Israelis After September 11
By Shibley Telhami
Since the tragedy of September 11, 2001, much has been said about how U.S. foreign policy, and especially U.S. policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has bred resentment in Arab and Muslim countries. Far less has been said, however, about an issue no less central and consequential: how the attacks and subsequent events have reshaped the perspectives and strategies of Israelis and Palestinians themselves. Growing insecurity has pushed Israel to rely more than ever on its close relationship with the United States, whereas Arabs and Muslims have rallied around the Palestinian cause. As these alliances are reinforced, the divide between the United States and the Arab and Muslim worlds is inevitably deepening.
Israel's Dilemma
The suicide bombings that followed the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian talks in the summer of 2000 sent Israel reeling. Far beyond their tragic human consequences, the bombings undermined the principal defensive strategy Israel has developed since its founding: deterring attacks by projecting an image of strength and resolve.
In recent decades, Israel has generally succeeded in deterring its Arab foes by maintaining an overwhelming advantage in conventional power and developing an implicit nuclear capability. To keep its deterrent credible, Israel has been prepared to pay a significant price. After the first Palestinian intifada in the late 1980s and early 1990s, for example, the Israeli military establishment rejected the notion of a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, even though the occupation of Gaza drained Israeli resources and provided few direct benefits. Withdrawing in the absence of a political agreement, it was believed, would look like a retreat in the face of a few ill-equipped but determined Palestinian fighters—something that would lead to more threats in more vital areas and eventually undermine Israel's very existence.
In 1993, when former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was mulling whether to sign the Oslo accords with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the most serious alternative discussed was a plan for unilateral withdrawal from Gaza (advocated especially by a retired Israeli general, Shlomo Gazit). A major reason that Rabin went ahead with the Oslo approach was that, in trying to maintain Israel's deterrent, he decided that it was better to take risks through a negotiated settlement than to send a message that Israel was on the run.
Similar calculations explain Israel's reluctance throughout the 1980s and 1990s to pull its troops out of Lebanon. Even though the post-1982 occupation of a slice of Lebanese territory brought Israel no direct strategic benefits and led to a steady stream of Israeli casualties and growing public discontent, Israeli military and political elites were adamantly opposed to pulling back without a political agreement with Lebanon and Syria.
Even when Ehud Barak promised, during his 1999 election campaign, to withdraw from Lebanon within a year after becoming prime minister, he wanted to do so in the context of an agreement with Syria. This helps explain why, after assuming office, he chose to focus his diplomatic efforts first on the Syrian track of the peace process. Only after those negotiations failed did ...
Shibley Telhami is Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy.