JEWISH JOURNAL
by Shmuel Rosner
August 17, 2014
The Obama administration’s decision to halt a transfer of Hellfire missiles requested by Israel – a decision first reported by the Wall Street Journal and later confirmed by administration officials in both governments – has expectedly raised the level of chatter concerning the US-Israel “crisis”. Several worthy comments (and several less worthy ones) were made about the incident. I’d like to add some of my own. The most important and most troubling fact about this leak of sensitive information – a leak that was probably meant to publicly put Israel on watch – is that it lacks explainable coherence. Usually, when the strong party of an alliance (in this case the US) puts the weaker party (in this case Israel) on watch there is an immediate reason. The US wants something; Israel is unwilling to accept the American position; the administration puts pressure on Israel; Israel caves (or not). Debate, pressure, outcome……
The current punishment is a mystery. We don’t know what it is that the US is trying to achieve by halting the shipment of arms. I see several possibilities (there are probably more):
A. To generally humiliate Netanyahu: Surely, there is no great love between this administration and the Netanyahu government, and holding the shipment can be just one of these tit-for-tat insults with no clear purpose in mind. If this is the case, that’s, well, childish.
B. To try to make Netanyahu more flexible at the Cairo negotiations: If this is the case, that means that, as David Horovitz wrote, the US is actively assisting Hamas (Horovitz made an even larger claim – that at this point, any public brawl between the US and Israel serves Hamas).
C. To pressure Israel into doing something else that Israel refuses to do, something that hasn’t yet been made public. If this is the case, we will probably get more hints in the coming days as to the matter under dispute.
If I needed to put my money on one of the options, I’d pick option A – the public humiliation about nothing. This means that the relations between the governments have reached such a low point that they no longer even need a reason to come at each other. Of course, this makes the Obama administration look pretty bad, and its policy unexplainable. Vindictiveness and pettiness are not exactly a sign of a healthy, thoughtful and effective foreign policy. But it should also make the Netanyahu government more worried, because this means that American punishment will now be served without even giving Israel a choice – it will not even give Israel a chance to cave under pressure or withstand pressure……
ArchitectGuy on Israel 