Israel and Reagan: Looking Ahead

ISRAEL AND REAGAN LOOKING AHEAD Wolf Blitzer .here have been two previous times in U.S.-Israeli relations when Republican presidents took over the responsibility of governing from Democratic administrations: in 1953, when Dwight David Eisenhower succeeded Harry S. Truman, and in 1969, when Richard M. Nixon replaced Lyndon Baines Johnson. Longtime pro-Israeli activists in Washington are recalling those earlier shifts in the wake of Ronald Reagan's smashing landslide over President Jimmy Carter. They are hoping that Reagan will honor his ringing series of supportive commitments made to Israel during the course ofthe long campaign. But native cynicism, resulting from often bitter experience, is tempering any overly glowing sense that U.S.-Israeli ties will now be set on a perfect course. It is recalled, for example, that Eisenhower, while personally rather sympathetic toward Israel, named John Foster Dulles to head the State Department, and that Dulles' pressure against Israel, especially to pull back from the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip following the 1956 war, was brutal. Moreover, he threatened to have the U.S. Justice Department investigate the tax-exempt status of the United Jewish Appeal and other charities going to Israel unless the young government of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion accepted U.S. demands. In those days, there were no pretensions that Egypt was signing a peace treaty with Israel in return for the unilateral Israeli withdrawal. Ten years later, in May 1967, Egypt's President Nasser moved troops into Sinai, closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, expelled the UN peacekeeping observers, and boasted that "our objective will be the destrucWoIfBlitzer is the Washington correspondent of The Jerusalem Post, and has been covering U.S. foreign policy since the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He has also served as a foreign correspondent in the Tel Aviv bureau ofReuters. 121 122 SAIS REVIEW tion of Israel. The Arab people want to fight." The Six Day War, and Israel's crushing victory, followed. Richard Nixon, during the 1968 campaign against Democratic Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, received only about 10 percent of the American Jewish vote. His first secretary of state, William P. Rogers, was "evenhanded" as far as Israel was concerned. Indeed, the Rogers Plan, released 11 months after Nixon took office, called on Israel to withdraw to the pre-1967 lines with only "minor modifications." Israeli officials and American Jews were outraged by it. Perhaps those memories have combined to sober Israeli activists following the Reagan victory. While the new president has affirmed his support for Israel as a "strategic asset" repeatedly over the years, there is some sense that the "realities" and the "responsibilities" of actually formulating U.S. foreign policy might not allow Reagan's genuinely pro-Israel tilt to be translated into actual deeds. There is also the realization that so many ofIsrael's most devoted friends ofrecent years will be missing from the Senate—friends such as Hubert Humphrey, Clifford Case of New Jersey, Richard Stone of Florida, Frank Church of Idaho, Birch Bayh of Indiana, and Jacob Javits of New York. The conservative Republican control ofthe Senate, for the first time in 26 years, further serves to dampen Israeli hopes that the coming years might represent a boon ofsorts for Israel, given the Reagan appreciation of Israel's "strategic" value to the United States. Traditionally, the leading opponents ofthe annual foreign aid bills, ofwhich Israel is the largest individual recipient, come from the budget-cutting right wing—both Democrats and Republicans. The new makeup of the Senate will cause some serious political dislocations for Israel. It will mean, at least in the short run, that Israel will be more dependent than ever on the good will of the executive branch of the U.S. government in meeting its very extensive economic, military, and political requirements. In the past, either when Democrats or Republicans controlled the White House, Israel could count on its friends in the Senate and House of Representatives to come to its defense during periods offriction with the administration. Congress had come to play essential roles in three areas: —Economic and military assistance. On several occasions, including 1979, when an administration's proposed foreign aid bill included...