The Triumph of "Linkage": A New Paradigm in U.S.-Israel Relations?

Controversy erupted two weeks ago when an article on the Foreign Policy website attributed statements to General David Petraeus to the effect that “Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the [Middle East].”

According to Mark Perry, the article's author, Petraeus suggested changes to the U.S. military command structure that would bring the Palestinian territories under his strategic purview at CENTCOM. The potential implications of such a move were obvious: the Palestine issue, Petraeus seemed to be saying, deleteriously impacts CENTCOM’s commitments in the region, and should be treated accordingly. While the alleged request was immediately denied, Perry wrote, news of the revered General’s views on Israel-Palestine “hit the White House like a bombshell,” triggering the chain of events that sent the Obama administration headlong into its ongoing rhetorical dust-up with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Soon enough, the military released a statement denying that Petraeus had put in an official request for CENTCOM’s restructuring. The correction, however, remained conspicuously silent on the controversial substance of the comments attributed to Petraeus, setting the blogosphere atwitter with speculation. These uncorroborated suspicions were then confirmed on March 16 when Petraeus presented a 56-page prepared statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee identifying “a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel” as one of several “root causes” of regional instability. The picture Petraeus drew was complex, with Israel figuring as just one of various moving parts. Yet the conclusion, for those with the eyes to see, was inescapable: one of the country’s highest-ranking military officials had just issued what amounted to a qualified endorsement of the “linkage” thesis.

“Linkage” first entered the Middle East policy lexicon last year with the publication of a book by veteran State Department peace processor — and unapologetic defender of Israel’s “interests” — Dennis Ross. Written with David Makovsky, fellow at the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), "Myths, Illusions, and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East” devoted a chapter to debunking the “myth” that Israel’s violent occupation of Palestinian land foments challenges for U.S. foreign policy in the region.

"Of all the policy myths that have kept us from making real progress in the Middle East, one stands out for its impact and longevity: the idea that if only the Palestinian conflict were solved, all other Middle East conflicts would melt away," Ross and Makovsky wrote. "This is the argument of 'linkage.'"

Makovsky, a frequent commentator on U.S.-Israel relations who never fails to recapitulate this argument, launched into it earlier this month during testimony for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “There are no strict linkages between the Palestinian and Iranian issues,” he said. “Regardless of progress on peace, Iran will seek a nuclear weapon. Moreover, senior Arab security officials say privately that they do not see progress on peace as decisive in influencing Arab efforts to halt Iran in any way.”

Of course, formulated in this way, the “linkage” thesis is an easily refutable straw man. No reasonable observer of the Middle East believes that “all other Middle East conflicts” will “melt away” if the U.S. succeeds in brokering a peace agreement. Nor has anyone ever contended that resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict would “decisively” impact U.S. policy vis-à-vis Iran, or that Iran would immediately abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons should the long-suffering Palestinians achieve national self-determination.

But by concocting and then launching an assault on spurious iterations of the “linkage” idea, hawkish Zionists like Ross and Makovsky are attempting to inoculate Israel’s settlement and occupation policies from any criticism that might implicate them in the degeneration of regional security dynamics. This explains why even Petraeus’s highly qualified version of “linkage” was greeted with hysterical imputations of anti-Semitism by Israel’s most fervent “supporters” in the U.S. (Anti-Defamation League chair Abe Foxman opined to the Jerusalem Post that CENTCOM’s analysis “smacks of blaming the Jews for everything,” while at last week’s AIPAC conference Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz challenged Petraeus to “put up or shut up. Prove your point or stop making these bigoted arguments.”)

As other bloggers have competently reported, the backlash by linkage-hating Zionists compelled Petraeus to issue a clarification at a press briefing last Wednesday. However, instead of recanting his earlier arguments, Petraeus reiterated them:

If you go to moderate leaders in the Arab world, they will tell you that the lack of progress in the Middle East peace process causes them problems, because their concern is that those who promote violence in Gaza and the West Bank will claim that because there’s no progress diplomatically that the only way to get progress is through violence. And that’s their concern. And that was really what we were trying to convey.

What Petraeus did waste his valuable time repudiating were the entirely fabricated attributions of “anti-Israel” sentiment and straw man permutations of “linkage” generated by the likes of Foxman and Makovsky. (“Do any of us think that al-Qaida will go away if [the Israel-Palestine] issue is solved?” mused Makovsky in response to a question about the Petraeus statements.) Fortunately, any attempt to mask the fact that “linkage” has become the position of the U.S. military was shot down this week when Defense Secretary Robert Gates issued his own, nearly identical endorsement.

The “linkage” cat is out of the bag, and it’s going to have serious repercussions for the U.S.-Israel relationship.

Analyses that read the present dispute between Obama and Netanyahu through the lens of recent American diplomatic history and, accordingly, advocate a return to Baker/Bush-style economic coercion tend to disregard a radically transformed reality. Having expended all of his domestic political capital on a contentious health care bill, Obama is in no position to face down a pugnaciously pro-Israel Congress, particularly on the eve of a campaign season during which Republicans are expected to exploit accusations of anti-Israelism to the hilt. Nor, on the other hand, is Israel any longer the fledgling economic power it was in 1991, for whom American loan guarantees were a thing of some consequence.

Already it’s become clear, despite the amusing political theater of Netanyahu’s reportedly disastrous encounter with President Obama at the White House Tuesday night, that the economic component of our relationship with Israel will remain sacrosanct for the foreseeable future. Just yesterday, as details began to emerge about Obama’s subjection of Netanyahu to “the [kind of] treatment reserved for the President of Equatorial Guinea,” Haaretz nonetheless reported on a quarter-billion-dollar arms deal between the Pentagon and Israel’s Ministry of Defense. Needless to say, these are not the actions of a President preparing to play the military aid card.

But there are indications that the obsolescent Baker/Bush paradigm is now giving way to a new one: the “linkage” paradigm. Under this new pressure scheme, Obama will attempt to exploit the increasingly indisputable -- and, thanks to Petraeus and Gates, widely perceived -- contradiction between Netanyahu's two principal objectives: preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and maintaining his right-wing, pro-settler coalition.

Evidence of such a contradiction is legend. On March 23, Haaretz reported that Arab League chief Amr Moussa will propose measures "to engage Iran directly over concerns about its growing influence and its nuclear activities, in a step that could undermine U.S. and Israeli efforts to isolate the country." The newspaper added that the proposal was "linked to [Arab] frustration over the failure of Washington to stand up to Israel over its insistence on building on land the Palestinians want for a future state." Netanyahu's unwillingness to yield control of the Golan Heights in exchange for full peace with Syria -- a longstanding proposition -- has led to a further consolidation of ties between Iran and Syria, contra Obama's known ambition of exploding that alliance.

Obama has always been attuned to these linkages (an early point of disagreement between the President and Dennis Ross). But it's only now that the military establishment has thrown its support behind this premise that Obama wagers he can credibly lay out for Netanyahu. Thus it was reported yesterday on Israel's Ynet news website that, according to PA sources, "the U.S. has decided to present Netanyahu with the equation mentioned at the beginning of President Obama's term in office –- 'Bushehr for Yitzhar,' implying that Israel's cooperation in the West Bank is required in order to ensure American support against Iran." If this report is accurate, linkage has just become U.S. policy.

This strategy -- like any other -- is a gamble. Netanyahu could very well maintain his rejectionist posture on East Jerusalem, banking on the Israeli public's majority support for the settlements, their revulsion toward Obama, and the strength of the American pro-Israel lobby to subvert the administration's agenda. But the President has few politically viable alternatives.

And so he will attempt to exploit the contradictions of Israeli politics by aggressively demanding "concessions" on Jerusalem -- using Iran as his wedge -- until, hopefully, he manages to destabilize Netanyahu's right-wing coalition (a tactic veteran peace processors have dubbed "regime change"). According to press reports, Obama has already begun courting Tzipi Livni, leader of Israel's "moderate" Kadima party, in an effort to cultivate an alternative center-right coalition should the moment arise.

I'm not confident this strategy will bear fruit; nor am I confident that such fruit, in the form of "proximity talks" between Mahmoud Abbas and a center-right Israeli government, won't ultimately prove rotten to the core, just another fig leaf disguising the ongoing de facto annexation of the West Bank. But one thing is certain: the Israeli dream of de-linkage -- of infinite colonization without repercussions -- has finally awakened to the American nightmare described so vividly by Akiva Eldar: "The messages coming to the White House from Riyadh and Amman [are] starkly clear: If you don't rein in your Israeli friends, Tehran won't be the only Middle East capital where American flags will burn."

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