By Dr. Douglas F. Levesque, Founder of The Levesque Institute
Who would have thought that the United States, Israel’s greatest national ally would become aligned with her enemies?
The rapid deterioration of relations between the two friends is the result of several parameters:
First, is the United States governments’ wholesale acceptance of a two state solution to the Palestinian quandary. In 2007, the Annapolis Plan set forth by the Bush administration, and supported by the global “quartet” of Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations, made into policy what previous generations would have thought impossible – A Palestinian State with East Jerusalem as its capitol.
With such a preponderance of pressure, Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tipni Livni, were sucked into the vortex of giving away land for peace.
In fact, in 2008 Olmert and Livni offered the Palestinian Leader Mahmoud Abbas the entire West Bank, along with the already surrendered Gaza Strip.
The Israeli’s then sweetened the deal by also including East Jerusalem, a “tunnel” or land bridge connecting the two pieces of land, plus swaths of the Negev desert to compensate for Israeli settelements. This would have created an independent Palestine side by side with an independent Israel, but was refused by Palestinian leaders.
Of course, the continuation of invading rocket fire into Israel led to the military incursion of early 2009 and the seeming death of the Annapolis Plan. The U.S. also paid a dear price for such heavy handed peace mongering.
Natural disasters, financial collapse, political dissatisfaction and military weakening will always be the results of such a poor friendship with Israel. While Americans chose to shift to the political left, Israelis chose the hard right factions to lead them.
Secondly, the new Obama administration, with Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, has gone even farther in joining the rest of the world in pressuring Israel with the Annapolis plan. New Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has declared that the Plan “has no validity”, igniting a firestorm from world opinion and from former FM Livni, who retorted that his statement, “wiped out in 20 seconds” years of efforts to advance the peace process.
A State Department spokesperson added, “We are going to work hard to see what we can do to move the process forward.” The New York Times call Lieberman “blunt and belligerent”; CNN touts that the Israeli’s position will “spurn the peace process.” With such harsh rhetoric being offered up, it seems as though Israel is being isolated from America more and more each passing day.
Lastly, with our administration sitting down to talk “warmly” with the Iranians and the Pentagon reversing its doctrine and dealing with the leading state sponsor of terrorism, we send a clear message to our former ally in the Middle East, “It behooves us to let you stand alone.” Our real consolation is in knowing that Israel is the “apple” of God’s eye, and will never truly stand alone. (Psalm 17)