Friends in the Middle East

Despite the plurality of the first word in the preceding title, there is only one truly strong ally of the United States in the aforementioned war-torn region: Israel. Since its inception in the aftermath of World War II, the small nation has been under constant threat from Iran and other regimes that condone or even sponsor anti-Semitic terrorism. Moreover, Israel has been in a constant warring state of its own with the Palestinians, who claim to comprise an autonomous state that is currently not recognized by the United States. So much of the current political discussion regarding foreign policy has revolved around how the United States should intervene in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and which side it should primarily take. Based on the post-World War II history of the region combined with the foundational Judeo-Christian values of the United States, it is necessary and just to bolster the U.S.-Israeli alliance and assure the Jewish people their rightful ancestral homeland.

Image Courtesy of the University of Maryland

Just a few weeks before this post, President Trump held a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House to unveil a peace plan to settle the conflict. The proposed plan—which hangs in the balance due to Netanyahu on the ballot next week and Trump up for re-election in November—establishes a recognized State of Palestine to coexist with Israel. Currently, the Palestinians claim sovereignty over most of the West Bank north of Jerusalem as well as the city of Jerusalem itself. The peace plan would fragment part of the West Bank into Israeli control, establish Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and bestow an extended region of the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians. Additionally, several Israeli enclaves would be established throughout the West Bank region.

Image Courtesy of The New York Times

Critics of the Trump-Netanyahu plan have condemned it for constituting somewhat of a fragmented “pseudo-state” for the Palestinians. Indeed, the plan would require significant cession of territory by the people who claim it. However, it is important to recognize why the State of Israel was established at all. The postwar United Nations intended to bestow an autonomous nation to the Israeli people, who had just horrifically lost six million of their brethren in the Holocaust. The establishment was significant in that it became the first Jewish state in the near-two thousand years since the Jewish Diaspora and occupation by the Romans and Babylonians. The costal Gaza strip initially belonged to Egypt following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War but was shortly re-occupied by the Israelites after the Six-Day War in 1967. In 2005, under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israel agreed to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, which is now subject to rule by Hamas following elections in 2006 (Marks).

One may question the Israelis’ stake in the Gaza Strip if it geographically disparate from Jerusalem and adjacent to Egypt—and, by extension, an Arab alliance. Such a “stake” lies precisely in the nature of the incumbent group, Hamas. In the 14 years since occupation, Hamas has amassed weapons never delegated by any peace agreement and has used them to ominously threaten and occasionally strike Israel. Any tourist to Israel will recount the extent to which it is fortified by a ubiquitous military presence; such measures are taken to deter Hamas and defend itself from incoming strikes.

Image Courtesy of the Australian Institute

The United States was founded on the basis of Judeo-Christian values that permeate public life, despite the perceived “separation of Church and State” under the First Amendment. Not only must a civil society cherish and uphold its founding principles in its domestic policies; it has a responsibility to monitor worldly affairs to ensure that such principles and values carried out and adequately served abroad. That is certainly not to look down upon global diversity of ideas and customs: merely, a nation acting as the undisputed police of the world has a duty to correct a situation that threatens its values and its interests. Israel is the most democratic (though, like the U.S., not fully democratic) society in the Middle East; therefore the U.S. must continue to bolster its alliance with Israel so that democratic principles can exist in a mostly undemocratic region.

Critics of such a sentiment may question why the Palestinians should be regarded as inferior. Indeed, the Palestinian leadership claims that Israel’s charges of state-sponsored anti-Semitism are merely facades to mask its own “apartheid-like” policies against rightful Arab occupants (Turner). However, the dual behavior of the dueling states has demonstrated that the Palestinian authority—certainly not its citizenry—has failed on several occasions to comply with fundamental law of civilization (e.g., by sponsoring Hamas-led terrorism and the killings of several citizens). It is therefore necessary and just to recognize the Israelis’ ancestral homeland (including the Palestinian-occupied Judea) as belonging to the Jewish people, where a peaceful coexistence with regional Arabs can continue and where the long-overdue preservation of strong Judeo-Christian and democratic values can exist in a region that is in dire need of them.

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