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The Limits of U.S. Influence over Israel
(Wall Street Journal) Dennis Ross - The high death toll among Palestinian civilians in Israel's war with Hamas has triggered repeated calls for placing conditions on American assistance to the Jewish state. The reality is that U.S. aid to Israel has never been a blank check. We have often used military assistance as a way to achieve our own policy goals - to encourage Israel to take risks for peace or to help deter American enemies in the Middle East. But because Israel is a democracy, its policy choices are often shaped and determined by public opinion, and history shows that if Israeli voters think the U.S. is making unreasonable demands, it will reject them, regardless of the costs. Israel lives in a tough neighborhood, with enemies who call for its eradication. Jewish and Israeli history make it clear that such calls need to be taken seriously, because the unimaginable can happen; Hamas' Oct. 7 attack demonstrated that dire reality once again. U.S. strategic cooperation with Israel is not simply a favor to Israel. It serves American geopolitical interests while also channeling much of the aid back to the U.S. defense industry. Israel has developed and shared critical new military technologies, whether "active armor" to protect tanks or the Arrow and Iron Dome anti-missile defense systems. Moreover, the two countries share intelligence since the forces that threaten Israel usually also threaten the U.S. Threatening to withhold U.S. aid unless Israel changes its policies would only have the effect of making the Israelis feel they must go it alone. As one senior Israeli official recently told me, "If America says you have to stop or we will cut you off, we will fight with our fingernails if we have to - we have no choice." Today, with Israelis united in wartime and still traumatized by the Hamas attack, trying to force them to accept a Palestinian state would backfire. Making assistance to Israel conditional on certain policies won't build American influence or further American interests. The writer is a Distinguished Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and has played a key role in U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East since the Reagan administration.