From the Los Angeles Times
Israel's false friends
U.S. presidential candidates aren't doing the Jewish state any favors by
offering unconditional support.
By John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt

January 6, 2008

Once again, as the presidential campaign season gets underway, the leading
candidates are going to enormous lengths to demonstrate their devotion to the
state of Israel and their steadfast commitment to its "special relationship"
with the United States.

Each of the main contenders emphatically favors giving Israel extraordinary
material and diplomatic support -- continuing the more than $3 billion in
foreign aid each year to a country whose per capita income is now 29th in the
world. They also believe that this aid should be given unconditionally. None
of them criticizes Israel's conduct, even when its actions threaten U.S.
interests, are at odds with American values or even when they are harmful to
Israel itself. In short, the candidates believe that the U.S. should support
Israel no matter what it does.

Such pandering is hardly surprising, because contenders for high office
routinely court special interest groups, and Israel's staunchest supporters --
the Israel lobby, as we have termed it -- expect it. Politicians do not want
to offend Jewish Americans or "Christian Zionists," two groups that are deeply
engaged in the political process. Candidates fear, with some justification,
that even well-intentioned criticism of Israel's policies may lead these
groups to turn against them and back their opponents instead.

If this happened, trouble would arise on many fronts. Israel's friends in the
media would take aim at the candidate, and campaign contributions from
pro-Israel individuals and political action committees would go elsewhere.
Moreover, most Jewish voters live in states with many electoral votes, which
increases their weight in close elections (remember Florida in 2000?), and a
candidate seen as insufficiently committed to Israel would lose some of their
support. And no Republican would want to alienate the pro-Israel subset of the
Christian evangelical movement, which is a significant part of the GOP base.

Indeed, even suggesting that the U.S. adopt a more impartial stance toward the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict can get a candidate into serious trouble. When
Howard Dean proposed during the 2004 campaign that the United States take a
more "evenhanded" role in the peace process, he was severely criticized by
prominent Democrats, and a rival for the nomination, Sen. Joe Lieberman,
accused him of "selling Israel down the river" and said Dean's comments were
"irresponsible."

Word quickly spread in the American Jewish community that Dean was hostile to
Israel, even though his campaign co-chair was a former president of the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee and Dean had been strongly pro-Israel
throughout his career. The candidates in the 2008 election surely want to
avoid Dean's fate, so they are all trying to prove that they are Israel's best
friend.

These candidates, however, are no friends of Israel. They are facilitating its
pursuit of self-destructive policies that no true friend would favor.

The key issue here is the future of Gaza and the West Bank, which Israel
conquered in 1967 and still controls. Israel faces a stark choice regarding
these territories, which are home to roughly 3.8 million Palestinians. It can
opt for a two-state solution, turning over almost all of the West Bank and
Gaza to the Palestinians and allowing them to create a viable state on those
lands in return for a comprehensive peace agreement designed to allow Israel
to live securely within its pre-1967 borders (with some minor modifications).
Or it can retain control of the territories it occupies or surrounds, building
more settlements and bypass roads and confining the Palestinians to a handful
of impoverished enclaves in Gaza and the West Bank. Israel would control the
borders around those enclaves and the air above them, thus severely
restricting the Palestinians' freedom of movement.

But if Israel chooses this second option, it will lead to an apartheid state.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said as much when he recently proclaimed that if
"the two-state solution collapses," Israel will "face a South African-style
struggle." He went so far as to argue that "as soon as that happens, the state
of Israel is finished." Similarly, Israel's deputy prime minister, Haim Ramon,
said earlier this month that "the occupation is a threat to the existence of
the state of Israel." Other Israelis, as well as Jimmy Carter and Anglican
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have warned that continuing the occupation will turn
Israel into an apartheid state. Nevertheless, Israel continues to expand its
settlements on the West Bank while the plight of the Palestinians worsens.

Given this grim situation, one would expect the presidential candidates, who
claim to care deeply about Israel, to be sounding the alarm and energetically
championing a two-state solution. One would expect them to have encouraged
President Bush to put significant pressure on both the Israelis and the
Palestinians at the recent Annapolis conference and to keep the pressure on
when he visits the region this week. As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
recently observed, settling this conflict is also in America's interest, not
to mention the Palestinians'.

One would certainly expect Hillary Clinton to be leading the charge here.
After all, she wisely and bravely called for establishing a Palestinian state
"that is on the same footing as other states" in 1998, when it was still
politically incorrect to use the words "Palestinian state" openly. Moreover,
her husband not only championed a two-state solution as president but he laid
out the famous "Clinton parameters" in December 2000, which outline the only
realistic deal for ending the conflict.

But what is Clinton saying now that she is a candidate? She said hardly
anything about pushing the peace process forward at Annapolis, and remained
silent when Rice criticized Israel's subsequent announcement that it planned
to build more than 300 new housing units in East Jerusalem. More important,
both she and GOP aspirant Rudy Giuliani recently proclaimed that Jerusalem
must remain undivided, a position that is at odds with the Clinton parameters
and virtually guarantees that there will be no Palestinian state.

Sen. Clinton's behavior is hardly unusual among the candidates for president.
Barack Obama, who expressed some sympathy for the Palestinians before he set
his sights on the White House, now has little to say about their plight, and
he too said little about what should have been done at Annapolis to facilitate
peace. The other major contenders are ardent in their declarations of support
for Israel, and none of them apparently sees a two-state solution as so urgent
that they should press both sides to reach an agreement. As Zbigniew
Brzezinski, a former U.S. national security advisor and now a senior advisor
to Obama, noted, "The presidential candidates don't see any payoff in
addressing the Israel-Palestinian issue." But they do see a significant
political payoff in backing Israel to the hilt, even when it is pursuing a
policy -- colonizing the West Bank -- that is morally and strategically
bankrupt.

In short, the presidential candidates are no friends of Israel. They are like
most U.S. politicians, who reflexively mouth pro-Israel platitudes while
continuing to endorse and subsidize policies that are in fact harmful to the
Jewish state. A genuine friend would tell Israel that it was acting foolishly,
and would do whatever he or she could to get Israel to change its misguided
behavior. And that will require challenging the special interest groups whose
hard-line views have been obstacles to peace for many years.

As former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami argued in 2006, the American
presidents who have made the greatest contribution to peace -- Carter and
George H.W. Bush -- succeeded because they were "ready to confront Israel
head-on and overlook the sensibilities of her friends in America." If the
Democratic and Republican contenders were true friends of Israel, they would
be warning it about the danger of becoming an apartheid state, just as Carter
did.

Moreover, they would be calling for an end to the occupation and the creation
of a viable Palestinian state. And they would be calling for the United States
to act as an honest broker between Israel and the Palestinians so that
Washington could pressure both sides to accept a solution based on the Clinton
parameters. Implementing a final-status agreement will be difficult and take a
number of years, but it is imperative that the two sides formally agree on the
solution and then implement it in ways that protect each side.

But Israel's false friends cannot say any of these things, or even discuss the
issue honestly. Why? Because they fear that speaking the truth would incur the
wrath of the hard-liners who dominate the main organizations in the Israel
lobby. So Israel will end up controlling Gaza and the West Bank for the
foreseeable future, turning itself into an apartheid state in the process. And
all of this will be done with the backing of its so-called friends, including
the current presidential candidates. With friends like them, who needs
enemies?

John J. Mearsheimer is a professor of political science at the University of
Chicago. Stephen M. Walt is a professor of international affairs at Harvard's
Kennedy School of Government. They are the authors of "The Israel Lobby and
U.S. Foreign Policy," published last year by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

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