By Andrew P. Miller* – Foreign Affairs
A New Paradigm for American Policy.
The bond between the United States and Israel has remained extraordinarily close for three decades. The United States has remained in lockstep with Israel through the heady days of the 1990s peace process with the Palestine Liberation Organization; the second intifada, the five-year Palestinian uprising that began in 2000; and then, over the next two decades, a series of conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon. The bond endured through Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza, with two U.S. presidential administrations providing largely unconditional diplomatic and military support to Israel.
But the Gaza war has also made clear that maintaining this type of bilateral relationship comes with steep costs. With few exceptions—most notably the cease-fire that went into effect in early October 2025—Washington has struggled without success to shape Israel’s conduct of the war. That failure is not an anomaly; it is rooted in the nature of the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Although the United States and the United Kingdom may have a “special relationship,” the United States and Israel have an “exceptional relationship”: Israel receives treatment that no other ally or partner enjoys. When other countries buy U.S. weapons, the sales are subject to a bevy of U.S. laws; Israel has never truly been compelled to comply. Other partners refrain from displaying overt preferences for one American political party; Israel’s leaders do so and face no consequences. And Washington does not typically defend another country’s policies that are contrary to its own, nor does it block mild criticism of them in international organizations—but this is standard practice when dealing with Israel.
This exceptionalism has hindered the interests of both countries, in addition to inflicting immense harm on the Palestinians. Rather than helping ensure Israel’s survival—the policy’s ostensible intent—unconditional U.S. support has enabled the worst instincts of Israeli leaders. The results have been the relentless increase in illegal Israeli settlements and settler violence in the West Bank and mass civilian casualties in Gaza, along with famine in some areas. American support has enabled reckless Israeli military actions across the Middle East and exacerbated Israel’s own existential dangers. In the United States, the war in Gaza has dramatically eroded public support for Israel, with unfavorable attitudes toward Israel at record highs across the political spectrum.
The relationship cannot continue in its current form indefinitely. It requires a new paradigm, one more consistent with how Washington engages other countries, including its closest treaty-bound allies. This new paradigm should entail clear expectations and limits, accountability for compliance with U.S. and international law, conditions on support when Israeli policies go against U.S. interests, and noninterference in domestic politics—in short, a far more normal bilateral relationship.
For the United States, this long-overdue adjustment is a strategic, political, and moral imperative. From preventing Israel’s annexation of the West Bank to forging a common strategy to address Iran’s nuclear program, a normal U.S.-Israeli relationship would produce better outcomes than an exceptional one that too often incentivizes dangerous Israeli behavior and depletes Washington’s global influence. If the United States delays this transformation, the result may be damage to its international position, Israel’s near-total alienation from the American people and the rest of the world, and the collapse of Palestinian society in Gaza and eventually the West Bank. Changing course before it is too late is in the best interests of all—Americans, Israelis, and Palestinians.
No Daylight
Although the United States and Israel have had a unique bond since Israel’s founding, their relationship has not always taken its current exceptional form. Until President Bill Clinton’s administration, U.S. support did not translate to a blank check. American presidents did not hesitate to disagree with Israel’s government in public or to impose consequences to try to change its behavior. U.S. administrations frequently supported—or abstained from—UN Security Council resolutions critical of Israeli actions, particularly settlement construction. During the 1956 Suez War, the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israeli wars in Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s, and the first intifada in the late 1980s and early 1990s, American presidents threatened to sanction or cut off weapons shipments to Israel.
But then, the end of the Cold War and the decisive U.S. victory in the first Gulf War seemed to create propitious circumstances for a comprehensive Middle East settlement. In pursuit of that goal, Clinton and his team offered practically unconditional rhetorical and material support to Israel, premised on a belief that a strong Israel with unstinting U.S. backing was more likely to take risks for peace. They avoided displaying differences between the United States and Israel—even routine U.S. statements objecting to Israeli settlement construction were diluted, and words such as “occupation” fell out of the official U.S. lexicon. They sometimes offered increased military support as an incentive for Israeli concessions but did not withhold it as leverage. They shunned coercive measures, irrespective of Israel’s conduct.
That American approach was based on four core assumptions. First, U.S. and Israeli interests were overwhelmingly aligned, if not identical, including the shared objective of a negotiated peace between Israel and the Palestinians and other neighbors. Second, Israel better understood its own interests and the threats it faced from hostile states whose strength was comparable to its own. Third, it would be better to resolve any differences between the two allies in private, because public “daylight” between them emboldened Israel’s enemies. Finally, when push came to shove, Israel would accommodate significant American concerns to preserve a relationship that was essential to its long-term survival.
The relationship that developed from this starting point was truly singular in its expectations, standards, and modus operandi. Propelled in part by a formidable pro-Israel political lobby in the United States, it has persisted without substantial modification. Washington still exhibits extreme deference not only to Israeli leaders’ judgment but also to their domestic political needs. It provides, without conditions, massive amounts of military aid: a 2016 memorandum of understanding promised $3.8 billion per year, a daily transfer of over $10 million in American taxpayers’ money, and Congress regularly adds more. The United States is expected not only to avoid publicly criticizing Israel but also to support Israel’s position in international bodies, most conspicuously by vetoing UN Security Council resolutions to which Israel objects, whether or not they reflect U.S. policy. And Israel is rarely if ever subjected to certain U.S. laws and policies, particularly statutory restrictions related to human rights violations that apply to all recipients of U.S. aid.
Unconditional support has led inexorably to moral hazard for both countries. Israel has no reason to accommodate American concerns and interests because refusing to do so costs nothing. Instead, Israel is emboldened to pursue maximalist positions that are often incompatible with U.S. interests and sometimes with Israeli interests, too. Israel has dealt severe blows to enemies it shares with the United States, and the practical guarantee of American support may help deter adversaries from attacking Israel. But because Israel’s power far surpasses that of all rivals, this support creates a perverse incentive for Israel to act rashly and without necessity, confident that U.S. backing will continue regardless of the outcome of its adventurism. And unflagging support implicates the United States in Israel’s actions, occasionally inviting direct retaliation against U.S. forces. Israel, in turn, chafes at the heightened scrutiny it receives from some segments of the American public because of the aid it enjoys.
Israeli leaders are hardly infallible in their judgments, including about developments in their own region. That is true of leaders anywhere, but Israel’s history has predisposed some of its policymakers to focus excessively on day-to-day survival and to misapprehend or ignore strategic dynamics as a result. It is tragically ironic that Israel’s two largest intelligence blunders—the failure to prevent one surprise attack that started the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and another one, 50 years later, on October 7—were caused not by a lack of tactical intelligence but by overly rosy strategic assessments that led Israeli leaders to dismiss warning signs. The United States should not disregard Israel’s judgments, but neither should it blindly substitute them for its own.
When both Israel and the United States have well-intentioned leaders committed to peace, the relationship’s flaws can be mitigated. Yitzhak Rabin, who served his second term as Israel’s prime minister from 1992 until his assassination in 1995, understood that stiff-arming Washington might not immediately damage the partnership, but he was wary of long-term harm. He recognized that U.S. concerns were sincere and rooted in a shared objective of peace, notwithstanding differences over what peace would entail. The exceptional relationship might have been justifiable in those exceptional circumstances. Imperfect though Rabin was—he oversaw extensive settlement growth, for example—he was a responsive U.S. partner. Although he never publicly acknowledged the goal of establishing a Palestinian state, his signing of the Oslo accords with Yasser Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, in 1993 was a step in that direction and was supported by more than 60 percent of the Israeli public.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, by contrast, views the exceptional relationship as something to exploit rather than a safety net to be used in extremis. He treats the promise of “no daylight” between the United States and Israel as a one-way commitment and uses public spats to his advantage, such as when he criticized the Biden administration for withholding certain weapons and when he appeared before Congress in 2015 to attack a prospective nuclear deal with Iran. Just as important, his hostility to a two-state solution is overwhelmingly supported by an Israeli public that has shifted decisively rightward in recent decades. A June 2025 Pew poll found that just 21 percent of Israelis thought Israel could coexist peacefully with a Palestinian state. Netanyahu’s inclusion in his coalition of two far-right parties led by extremists who baldly espouse racism and violence, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, reflects this change in societal attitudes. In short, the United States is now working with an Israeli government that does not espouse democratic values, shows no interest in a just resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and often does not reciprocate the American commitment to preserving the health of the bilateral relationship.
Exceptional Treatment
The aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attack highlighted the core flaws of the exceptional relationship. U.S. President Joe Biden and his team predictably struggled to shape the Netanyahu government’s conduct of the war in Gaza and its actions elsewhere in the region. The United States did not seek an understanding with Israel, formally or informally, to specify what assistance it would deliver, under what conditions, and toward what military objectives. The administration’s support for Israel’s military response signaled appropriate solidarity with a bereaved and beleaguered partner, but without this clarity, to Netanyahu it represented a blank check.
U.S. engagements with Israeli officials at the war’s outset established a pattern of carefully calibrated pressure but ultimate deference. From the earliest Israeli operations in Gaza, it was clear that the Israel Defense Forces were placing insufficient emphasis on minimizing Palestinian civilian casualties. The Biden administration repeatedly and firmly, but privately, registered its concerns about IDF bombing practices in the first weeks of the war. Yet whatever effect those conversations could have had on Israeli actions was diminished by American officials’ public comments that lamented civilian casualties but avoided condemning them or casting blame on Israel.
The administration was reluctant to withhold weapons deliveries during this initial period, and U.S. vetoes of several UN Security Council resolutions calling for a cease-fire, for reasons including the omission of Hamas’s role in the conflict, were interpreted by other countries as condoning Israeli tactics. Even as public criticism mounted in the United States, Netanyahu appeared to conclude that he could ignore any displeasure within the administration, which would prioritize Israel’s freedom of action over mitigating civilian harm.
The cease-fire in November 2023 that freed 105 Israeli hostages in Gaza was a significant achievement, but more than a year passed without another truce. During that time, U.S. officials delivered increasingly blunt and reproachful messages to Israeli leaders about Israeli tactics. Although they emphasized that Israel needed to do “more” to protect civilians, they rarely provided any indication that U.S. support was in jeopardy. They never used military aid as leverage to try to change Israel’s conduct. The application of the so-called Leahy laws, which prohibit U.S. assistance to military units credibly implicated in gross violations of human rights, was effectively suspended in Israel’s case, even though the laws do not allow such exceptions. Only in May 2024 did Biden pause the delivery of certain weapons, in response to Israel’s beginning its campaign against Hamas forces in the city of Rafah, despite U.S. appeals to postpone until the civilian population had been safely evacuated. The IDF ended up modifying its plan for Rafah, but in the grand scheme of the war the administration’s pressure was too little, too late.
A marginally more successful dynamic unfolded with humanitarian aid. At first, Israel blockaded Gaza entirely, against the United States’ wishes. Although the Biden administration successfully persuaded the Netanyahu government to reverse this decision, Israeli restrictions limited the number of daily truckloads of aid entering Gaza to a fraction of those required to meet basic needs. Yet it is entirely possible that no assistance would have entered the territory had it not been for persistent U.S. efforts. On this particular issue, the Biden administration occasionally used its leverage. Twice in 2024—an April phone call between Biden and Netanyahu, and a September letter from the U.S. secretaries of state and defense to their Israeli counterparts—the administration threatened to reduce U.S. military support if Israel did not take defined steps to improve humanitarian relief. Both times, Israel largely, although ephemerally, complied.
U.S. pressure was effective, but it was not sustained. The administration chose not to use other tools at its disposal, such as invoking Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act, which prohibits military assistance to any country that blocks U.S. humanitarian aid. Under this provision, U.S. officials could have either declared Israel in violation and then waived the aid suspension, effectively issuing a public censure, or allowed the prohibition to come into force and ceased providing weapons. Both actions could have helped induce Israel to allow more aid into Gaza. Likewise, partly to avoid triggering 620I, the Biden administration issued a national security memorandum in February 2024 that established stricter humanitarian and human rights standards for countries that receive U.S. military aid. Its report on Israel’s compliance, released that May, found Israel’s assurances that it was facilitating the entry of aid into Gaza and complying with international law “credible and reliable”—a finding that persuaded few close observers of the conflict.
The Biden administration had more success in preventing the war in Gaza from expanding. Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen all became involved in one way or another, but the violence did not metastasize into a sustained, multifront war. The administration was able to mobilize a multinational defense coalition that largely neutralized Iranian attacks on Israel in April and October of 2024, preventing further escalation. And by making clear to Israel in the aftermath that the United States would not join offensive operations, it kept Israel’s response limited and bought more time for diplomacy. But Biden still struggled to curtail Israeli operations that could have snowballed into regional conflict. It was Israeli attacks of dubious utility in Damascus that precipitated (but did not justify) the first round of Iranian strikes against Israel. More often than not, Israel had a free hand, and effective U.S. military protection against the Iranian attack may have given Israel greater confidence to launch riskier operations in later months.
Since President Donald Trump returned to office, his approaches to Israel have alternated among exceptional treatment, genuine pressure, and a more transactional strategy. Trump and his aides got off to a promising start, helping pressure Netanyahu into accepting the Biden administration’s January 2025 cease-fire proposal. But the new administration then spent the next several months effectively outsourcing U.S. policy to Israel. After the January cease-fire began, Trump’s aides made no effort to persuade Netanyahu to participate in negotiations to extend the truce beyond the first phase. And when the Israeli prime minister unilaterally decided to break the cease-fire in March with a series of airstrikes, Trump endorsed the Israeli attacks. Instead of pressing Israel to maximize aid delivery, the administration said nothing as Israel imposed a disastrous total blockade on Gaza for more than two months, a move that eventually plunged part of the territory into famine. When Israel lifted the blockade in May after belated U.S. objections, the Trump administration helped it create a new aid distribution mechanism to replace the well-established UN-led system. The new system—which even Netanyahu had to admit “did not work” in a September interview with Fox News—forced many hungry Palestinians to travel long distances to get to one of just four food distribution sites. More than a thousand Palestinians seeking aid were killed.
The freer hand the Trump administration gave Israel also emboldened its regional adventurism. Israeli operations in Lebanon and Syria throughout the spring and summer elicited only weak protests from the White House. When Israel launched a war against Iran in June, Trump distanced himself from Israel at first but then extolled its performance once the strikes appeared successful. Soon enough, Trump was ordering U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites—undoubtedly Netanyahu’s hope all along.
It was not until late September, and after nearly 20,000 more Palestinian deaths since the collapse of the January 2025 cease-fire, according to UN estimates, that Trump took the reins and pushed for another cease-fire. In a clear illustration of the moral hazards of the exceptional relationship, the trigger for the U.S. reversal was Israel’s reckless attempted assassination that month of Hamas leaders in Qatar, a partner of the United States and the host of the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East. The United States’ inability to protect a partner from a country that receives billions of dollars in U.S. support threatened to render American credibility worthless.
In response, the Trump administration, together with key Arab and Muslim countries, launched a full-court press on Israel and Hamas to end the fighting. The president’s team conditioned an expected Oval Office meeting on Netanyahu’s acceptance of Trump’s “peace plan.” Trump left no room for escape. He held a press conference with Netanyahu only after essentially forcing Netanyahu to call Qatar’s prime minister to apologize and agree to sign the cease-fire proposal on air. Netanyahu has “got to be fine with it,” Trump told an Israeli reporter. “He has no choice.”
The cease-fire that went into effect on October 10 was still in force as of November 2025, and has brought important steps toward peace, despite repeated violations by both Israel and Hamas. Getting this far required a departure from the rules of the exceptional relationship: Trump not only publicly castigated the Israeli government for the attack in Qatar but also threatened to embarrass Netanyahu if he did not accept the U.S. plan. It would be premature, however, to interpret this episode as a sign that the U.S.-Israeli relationship is normalizing. There is a high risk that upcoming, trickier steps necessary to end the war will not be taken if Trump loses interest and, as is the American pattern, reverts to enabling Netanyahu.
Unexceptional Results
American enablement of Israel has been detrimental for all involved. This is most manifestly true for the Palestinian society in Gaza shattered by two years of war. When the October cease-fire came into effect, according to the International Rescue Committee, at least 90 percent of the population was internally displaced. UN experts have declared that more than 600,000 Palestinians, including 132,000 children, faced famine conditions or malnutrition. And 78 percent of Gaza’s buildings had been damaged or destroyed. Although the threat of another October 7–style attack by Hamas has been eliminated for the foreseeable future, the lasting defeat of the organization, an outcome many in Gaza would welcome, requires a political solution in which Palestinians—without Hamas—can govern themselves in a state of their own. Yet neither the Israeli government nor Hamas is interested in delivering that solution.
That Israel has suffered or will suffer from the exceptional relationship is less obvious but no less true. Israel’s degradation of the capabilities of Hamas and Hezbollah, paired with the severe blows Israel and the United States inflicted on Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, bolsters Israel’s short-term security. But these achievements need to be weighed against the costs incurred in the process.
Israel’s international isolation as a result of the war in Gaza represents a clear and present danger for the country. Leaders of the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland have said publicly that they would arrest Netanyahu if he set foot on their territory. Germany and the United Kingdom, which have armed Israel for decades, are restricting weapons sales. Changing attitudes in the United States are particularly alarming for Israel. According to a September New York Times/Siena University poll, more than half of all Americans—and seven out of ten under the age of 30—oppose “providing additional economic and military support to Israel.” Two-fifths of all Americans, and two-thirds of those under age 30, think Israel has been killing Palestinian civilians intentionally. And Americans under the age of 45 are more than twice as likely to sympathize primarily with the Palestinians as they are to sympathize primarily with Israel. Although these changes in public opinion have not yet translated to changes in policy, Israel cannot expect the disconnect to persist indefinitely.
Israel’s military successes against its regional adversaries, moreover, may prove transitory. Iran’s interest in developing a nuclear weapon has arguably increased as its conventional deterrent and sense of security diminish. Should Iran eventually build a primitive nuclear bomb—or even return to the threshold of becoming a nuclear power, only this time without any monitoring regime in place—it will not be possible to call the June war a success. Similarly, in the absence of credible, effective Palestinian governance in Gaza, Israel may be forced to choose between a costly occupation and a failed state on its border. Hezbollah’s decline in Lebanon has so far worked to Israel’s advantage, but it would be premature to rule out a far less favorable outcome.
Even in the most optimistic scenarios, Israel’s regional military superiority obscures other dangers. Netanyahu’s continued pursuit of a domestic judicial overhaul, which in practice would reduce the courts’ oversight of his government, is threatening Israeli democracy. Demographic changes in Israel, particularly the relative growth of the ultra-Orthodox population, are reducing rates of participation in the economy and the armed forces. Commitment to unrestrained settlement expansion in the West Bank across the Israeli political spectrum, together with a lack of accountability for settler violence, could trigger a new intifada and make a Palestinian state a practical impossibility. And the war in Gaza has generated strong headwinds against further normalization with Arab and Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East and beyond. In each of these cases, unconditional U.S. support since October 7 has empowered Netanyahu to pursue policies that ignore or exacerbate existing problems. These developments threaten the future of a secure, Jewish, and democratic Israel—the avowed goal of U.S. policy and the hope of most Israelis.
Maintaining the exceptional relationship has imposed substantial costs on the United States, too. It is not just that U.S. policy is undermining American goals vis-à-vis Israel. The relationship in its current form has also damaged U.S. interests entirely unrelated to the Middle East. Washington’s international standing has plummeted over the past two years, a development that U.S. adversaries have eagerly exploited—China to bolster its standing as a supposedly responsible international actor, Russia to deflect from its crimes in Ukraine. Blanket American support for Israel has also entailed opportunity costs; every U.S. carrier strike group deployed to protect Israel from the consequences of actions enabled by the United States is one less available for duty in the Asia-Pacific. And although not the primary drivers of these trends, the exceptional relationship with Israel and perceived U.S. complicity in Israel’s war in Gaza have further stoked polarization and fueled anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in the United States.
Back to Normal
Continued U.S. deference to the Israeli government’s preferences, unconditional political and military support, and the avoidance of public friction will only continue to enable Israeli leaders’ worst tendencies, imperiling Israel’s security and stability, subjecting Palestinians to further suffering, and undermining U.S. global interests. Protecting Israeli, Palestinian, and American interests therefore depends on leaving the exceptional relationship behind. Washington must normalize its policies toward Israel, bringing them into conformity with the laws, rules, and expectations that govern U.S. foreign relations everywhere else. In a more normal relationship, the United States would have the flexibility to calibrate its policies to strike a more appropriate balance between the worthy objective of protecting Israel and the risk of enabling it. And to the extent that U.S. support for Israel resembles U.S. support for other allies, it will be easier for policymakers to defend the relationship to the American public.
Not all normal U.S. foreign relationships are equal; the United States and Israel have plenty of leeway to decide how close they want their relationship to be. Normalizing the relationship could therefore appeal to both advocates and strident opponents of strong ties—a reality that could help advance this paradigm but could also derail it. Israel’s fiercest advocates in the United States may caricature the end of exceptional treatment as U.S. abandonment of Israel and a reward for the perpetrators of October 7. Its fiercest critics, meanwhile, may argue that a more “normal” relationship is far too generous for a country that flagrantly violates international law, including with acts that many legal experts classify as genocide.
Yet if the assumption is correct that the relationship in its current form is unsustainable, the most responsible thing to do is to carefully and deliberately navigate this transition. The alternative, a rupture caused by the continued decline in American public support for Israel or a precipitate Israeli action, such as annexation of the West Bank, is far more likely to lead to extreme outcomes. Taking intentional steps toward normalization would enable the United States to set conditions that narrow the scope of the adjustment, such as by asking Israel to transfer governing responsibilities for more of the West Bank to Palestinians and to prosecute extremist settlers who commit acts of violence, as a prerequisite for moving forward with a normal bilateral relationship that is still a “special” relationship. This is the very point of normalization, putting the U.S. government in a position to more effectively exercise leverage.
At a minimum, the United States must fundamentally change how it conducts the relationship. The first requirement is to reach an understanding on shared and divergent goals and objectives, what each country is prepared to do to support the other’s interests, and which actions would jeopardize this support—to identify both expectations and limits. The United States should reaffirm its strong support for Jewish self-determination, for example, but draw a clear line, stressing that Israelis’ right to self-determination cannot prevent Palestinians from exercising the same right. Similarly, the United States should maintain its firm commitment to Israel’s security but emphasize that this commitment does not extend to enabling Israel’s permanent control of the West Bank or Gaza.
Next, the United States should apply U.S. and international laws, regulations, and standards to Israel in the same way it does to other countries. These would include the Leahy laws on gross violations of human rights, the Foreign Assistance Act, and the Law of Armed Conflict, which requires belligerents to discriminate between combatants and civilians in all military operations. For example, an Israeli army unit that abuses Palestinians must be held appropriately responsible by the Israeli legal system; until such punishment is exacted, the unit should not receive U.S. assistance. This is standard U.S. practice in dealings with other countries, including those with which the United States has a mutual defense treaty. Impunity only encourages further violations, even among allies.
Conditionality must also become a feature of the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Conditioning assistance or policy on another country’s alignment with U.S. goals is not always effective, but it can work. Trying to coerce a partner should not be U.S. officials’ first choice, either, but it should be an option if other approaches fail. Even the closest allies are not always moved by appeals to friendship, camaraderie, or past support. When that is the case, conditioning various forms of U.S. aid can impose, or threaten to impose, a tangible cost on those who act against U.S. interests, increasing the likelihood that they will change course, or at least distancing Washington from their conduct if they do not.
The United States has several ways to set conditions for Israel. The expiration of the 2016 U.S.-Israel Memorandum of Understanding on security assistance in 2028, for example, would offer an appropriate time to reevaluate the contribution of American taxpayers’ money to a wealthy country that now competes with American arms manufacturers for foreign sales. The Trump administration could, at least, extract policy commitments in return for a follow-on agreement. Washington could also tie its voting positions in the UN Security Council to particular Israeli actions. Or, as it has done in the past, the United States could withhold assistance from Israel commensurate with the scope of a policy divergence—for example, reducing aid by the amount Israel spends on settlements.
Finally, Washington must insist that both sides refrain from intervening in each other’s electoral and partisan politics. Netanyahu has repeatedly plunged into American domestic politics to advance his agenda—for example, all but endorsing the Republican candidate Mitt Romney for president in 2012 and speaking before a joint session of Congress in 2015, at the invitation of Republican members, to disparage the Iran nuclear deal. U.S. administrations have become involved in Israeli politics, too, but less frequently; the most notable example was an effort by the Clinton administration to bolster Netanyahu’s prime ministerial opponent, Shimon Peres, in the 1996 elections by inviting him to the White House shortly before Israelis went to the polls.
The problem is not one government expressing its views on the actions of another or meeting with opposition politicians and officials; it is doing so with the intent to strengthen a particular party. No U.S. administration would tolerate the kind of overt intervention Israel has engaged in from any other partner. Such action is inconsistent with the spirit of cooperation that should obtain between allies. And in the U.S.-Israeli case, it has harmed both countries. Netanyahu’s open favoritism toward Republicans has not only enabled him to undermine policies supported by a majority of Americans but also contributed to declining support for Israel among Democrats. A more normal diplomatic relationship cannot proceed with one country acting as a partisan political operator.
Walking the Walk
Normalizing the U.S.-Israeli relationship would not and should not disrupt the valuable cooperation between the two countries in the areas of intelligence, technology, and commerce, nor would it absolve Palestinian politicians of their responsibility to reform the Palestinian Authority or absolve Hamas of its blame for the horrific crimes of October 7 that precipitated the war in Gaza. It would, however, pave the way for better policy outcomes.
For one, the United States would be in a stronger position to prevent Israel from annexing the West Bank, a move that is inimical to U.S. interests and Palestinian rights. A preemptive discussion would need to clarify the United States’ definition of annexation and determine how Washington would respond should Israel proceed. A shared understanding that Washington will seriously consider stronger policy options—such as public censure or deductions from Israel’s military assistance account—could help deter annexation. In the meantime, withholding military aid to Israeli army units that assist in the construction of West Bank settlements would demonstrate a U.S. commitment to upholding international law, which prohibits actions by a state to settle its civilian population in territory it occupies. All else being equal, Israel would face more costs in annexing the West Bank if its relationship with the United States were more normal, decreasing the probability it would take that step.
A normal U.S.-Israeli relationship could also allow for a more enduring joint effort to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. It may be possible to resume nuclear negotiations with Iran if Washington can secure Israel’s agreement to refrain from certain kinds of military action by pledging to join Israel in responding militarily if Iran crosses an agreed threshold. Conditionality could play a constructive role in this policy: Washington could suspend arms sales in the event of an Israeli strike without U.S. approval, or it could pledge additional missile defense assistance to Israel if Iran reconstitutes its nuclear or ballistic missile program. It may even be easier to build bipartisan support for aggressive action against Iran if Israel abstains from intervening in U.S. political debates on the subject.
Decades of unconditional U.S. support for Israel have undermined, rather than advanced, peace and stability in the Middle East. The Palestinians have been the primary victims of these failures, but the United States and Israel have also paid a cost. And until the core problem with the bilateral relationship is fixed, that price will only grow. The United States and Israel will need to adapt if their relationship is to survive, transitioning from exceptional but self-destructive cooperation to a more normal relationship that can still form the basis of an alliance.
As long as Trump is in the Oval Office and Netanyahu and his extremist coalition are in the driver’s seat of the relationship, it is doubtful that Washington will fully commit to a coherent, institutionalized new approach. Yet it is not too soon to begin reckoning with what has gone wrong and discussing how to fix it. If the next opportunity to reset the increasingly vulnerable U.S.-Israeli relationship is missed, it will be to the detriment of Americans, Israelis, and Palestinians alike.
*Andrew P. Miller, Senior Fellow in National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress. He was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs in the Biden administration and Director for Egypt and Israel Military Issues on the National Security Council in the Obama administration.