‘New Israeli alliances allow it to defy US’ — Indyk

In an interview with Foreign Policy, former US special envoy for the peace process Martin Indyk says that Israel feels it is less dependent on the US because of new alliances with other countries.

“I think that something’s changing on the Israeli side too that all the things that you mentioned reflect, which is that Israel is not anymore the weak and small and dependent state that for so long characterized its position in its relationship with the United States.

“Now it has a strong army. It has a strong economy. And it has developed relations with world powers that it didn’t have before.
Few people noticed that the Indian government came out in support of Israel in this war; social media in China was pro-Israel. It has developed strategic relations with both countries, and with Russia as well, that led Israel to absent itself from the vote of the UN General Assembly condemning Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

“I think there’s a sense in Israel, particularly on the right, that they can afford to be defiant of the United States. Israelis also sense a potential for a new alignment with Gulf Arab states that didn’t exist before that is generated by their common interest in curbing Iran’s nuclear program and countering Iran’s efforts to dominate the region, opposing if not overthrowing Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and combating Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood, with its stepchild Hamas in Gaza. Israel shares this array of enemies with the Sunni Arab monarchs and the Abdel Fattah al-Sisi regime in Egypt. You can see it in this Gaza crisis quite clearly, where the Saudis and the Egyptians in particular wanted Israel to take down Hamas.”

“I saw this once before, before the 1973 war, when Israelis felt they were the superpower in the region and so didn’t have to worry about support from the United States. And it turned on a dime once Egypt and Syria attacked Israel by surprise on Yom Kippur in 1973, and suddenly Israel found itself totally dependent on the United States. So it may be that the bubble of illusion will burst here too and Israeli politicians on the right will come to understand that for all their bravado, the United States is not just Israel’s most important friend but in a real crunch its only reliable friend.”