•Œinherently Tender and Prone to Crisis:•Š U.S.-Israeli Relations, 1974-1989
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University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Dissertations, Theses, & Student Research, Department of History History, Department of 7-2021 “INHERENTLY TENDER AND PRONE TO CRISIS:” U.S.-ISRAELI RELATIONS, 1974-1989 Sean Scanlon University of Nebraska-Lincoln Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss Part of the Diplomatic History Commons, Islamic World and Near East History Commons, Political History Commons, and the United States History Commons Scanlon, Sean, "“INHERENTLY TENDER AND PRONE TO CRISIS:” U.S.-ISRAELI RELATIONS, 1974-1989" (2021). Dissertations, Theses, & Student Research, Department of History. 97. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss/97 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the History, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, & Student Research, Department of History by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. “INHERENTLY TENDER AND PRONE TO CRISIS:” U.S.-ISRAELI RELATIONS, 1974-1989 by Sean D. Scanlon A DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Major: History Under the Supervision of Professor Thomas Borstelmann Lincoln, Nebraska July, 2021 “INHERENTLY TENDER AND PRONE TO CRISIS:” U.S.-ISRAELI RELATIONS, 1974-1989 Sean D. Scanlon, PhD University of Nebraska, 2021 Adviser: Thomas Borstelmann This dissertation demonstrates how the relationship between the United States and the State of Israel underwent a significant transformation during 1970s and 1980s. After more than two decades of limited American aid since Israel declared its independence in 1948, the United States under Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan dramatically increased its support for Israel in the wake of the October War of 1973. This increased level of support is most apparent in the level of U.S. military aid provided to Israel, which Israel received under extremely favorable terms. The deepening of U.S.-Israeli ties from 1973 onwards occurred despite the fact that there were very real differences between U.S. and Israeli national and strategic interests, differences that sometimes erupted into fierce disagreements between American and Israeli officials. U.S. support for Israel was based on several factors, including Israel’s perceived value as a strategic ally during the Cold War, Americans’ vision of Israel as a fellow democracy with similar political, cultural, and religious values, and the large number of Jewish and Christian supporters in the United States. The 1970s and 1980s are also important for the U.S.-Israeli relationship because these years saw an important shift among Israel’s supporters in the United States. While American Jews had traditionally been Israel’s strongest backers, from the 1970s onwards American evangelical Christians emerged as some of Israel’s most vocal champions in the United States. Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………………1 Chapter 1: The United States, the Middle East, and Israel From the 18th Century to the 1950s…………………………………………………………………………………24 Chapter 2: From Exodus to the Six-Day War………………………………………62 Chapter 3: Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Israel, 1969-1974………………103 Chapter 4: Trouble with “Gallant Little Israel”……………………………………159 Chapter 5: Beyond Camp David: The United States and Israel during the Carter Administration………………………………………………………………………210 Chapter 6: The United States and Israel in the 1980s………………………………266 Epilogue……………………………………………………………………………323 Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………340 1 Introduction The October War of 1973 was a turning point in the history of U.S.-Israeli relations. When Israeli forces were caught unprepared by Egyptian and Syrian attacks on two fronts and suffered heavy losses in the first week of fighting, American officials feared that Israel was on the brink of collapse. To turn the tide in Israel’s favor, the United States launched a massive aerial resupply effort to deliver thousands of tons of military supplies to Israel. When the war ended after three weeks of fighting, the Israeli military had fully recovered and pushed back Egyptian and Syrian forces while inflicting heavy losses on both countries’ forces. In the months after the October War, the United States became deeply involved in negotiations between Israel and its Arab neighbors to bring stability to the Middle East and prevent another war. Spearheaded by U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the United States sought to act as an intermediary between the two sides by shuttling back and forth between the Israeli and Arab capitals to deliver one side’s position and obtain the other’s response, slowly building toward an agreement that was acceptable to both sides. By the spring of 1975, this effort had produced two limited disengagement agreements, one each with Egypt and Syria, and Kissinger was working toward a third with Egypt when negotiations with Israel collapsed. After extensive talks with Egypt’s president, Anwar Sadat, Kissinger and his team believed that they were on the verge of success. But when Israeli negotiators refused to continue talks without an Egyptian commitment of “non- belligerency,” Kissinger, with the support of U.S. President Gerald Ford, halted the talks and returned to the United States. In a letter to Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, Ford expressed his “deep disappointment” at Israel’s uncompromising position and told his 2 Israeli counterpart that he was ordering an “immediate reassessment of U.S. policy in the area, including our relations with Israel, with a view to assuring that the overall interests of America in the Middle East and globally will be protected.”1 Israel’s intransigence stood in marked contrast to what U.S. officials were hearing from Egypt. Under President Sadat, Egypt was slowly distancing itself from the Soviet Union and inching closer to Washington. Sadat and his advisers badly wanted to secure American economic and military aid and recover the Sinai Peninsula from Israel, and they saw Kissinger’s negotiations as the best way to achieve these objectives. Following a two-hour meeting with Sadat just days before negotiations with Israel came to a standstill, Kissinger wrote in a message to President Ford that, in his judgment, the Egyptian president has “carried the political concessions, in return for withdrawal, as far as he is able.”2 While the United States’ alliance with Israel had deeper roots than its emerging alliance with Egypt, Israel was proving to be a difficult and contentious negotiating partner. These 1975 talks came at a crucial moment in relations between Israel and the United States. After coming to Israel’s aid following Egypt and Syria’s joint attack on Israel in October 1973, the United States emerged definitively as Israel’s most important Western ally and the dominant outside power in the Middle East. But a close alliance with Israel threatened to disrupt broader U.S. strategic goals in the Middle East, which 1 Letter from Gerald Ford to Yitzhak Rabin, Washington, March 21, 1975, Document #156, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1969-1976, Volume XXVI: Arab-Israeli Dispute, 1973- 1976 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 2012), p. 553. 2 Memo from Deputy National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft to President Ford containing a message from Secretary Kissinger, Washington, March 18, 1975, Document #151, Ibid., 547. 3 included building a better relationship with the Arab world, maintaining access to the region’s oil, and rolling back the Soviet Union’s influence there. While Israel’s supporters in the United States argued that Israel could be a valuable strategic partner for the United States, the Rabin government’s unwillingness to compromise in negotiations with Egypt signaled that Israel’s interests were never going to be identical to those of the United States. At this critical juncture in its burgeoning alliance with Israel, the Ford administration faced a choice: it could pursue a strongly pro-Israel policy in the Middle East, or it could opt for a more balanced path that did not privilege Israel over its Arab neighbors. Under President Ford and Secretary Kissinger, the United States chose the former path, a decision that had dramatic consequences for the United States, Israel, and the broader Middle East for decades to come. By signing a secret memorandum of understanding (MOU) on September 1, 1975, the Ford administration committed the United States to supporting Israel’s occupation of Arab lands and supplying its security and energy needs for the foreseeable future. This step was consistent with a longer trend toward closer relations between the two countries since the early 1960s, but the mid- 1970s saw a distinct and dramatic shift toward a closer alliance that went further than anything that came before. In this dissertation I argue that the bilateral relationship between the United States and the State of Israel changed dramatically during the 1970s. Rooted in their efforts to preserve U.S. global influence in a changing global environment, President Richard Nixon and his senior adviser Henry Kissinger made Israel a key part of their efforts to check and roll back Soviet influence in the Cold War. As a result of this outlook, which 4 positioned Israel as a piece in a broader U.S. strategy, efforts to reach a comprehensive settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict were buried under geopolitical concerns. This dynamic of seeing the U.S.-Israeli alliance as strategically beneficial to U.S. goals in the Cold War continued even after the nature of the Cold War shifted in the late 1970s and into the 1980s. Beginning with the U.S. airlift to resupply Israel with military equipment during the October War of 1973, American military aid to Israel increased significantly in the 1970s, and that upward trend continued into the twenty-first century. In fact, according to a 2020 report from the Congressional Research Service, Israel has been the largest recipient of U.S.