The United States Has Less Leverage Over Israel Than You Think

The Biden administration has faced relentless criticism for its failure to halt Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza. U.S. President Joe Biden and his aides are reportedly alarmed by the mounting death toll (now exceeding 30,000 people) and frustrated by Israel’s refusal to allow an adequate supply of humanitarian assistance to reach the hundreds of thousands of innocent Palestinians who have been forced to flee their homes. Yet Biden has not halted the flow of U.S. arms, and the United States has vetoed three U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for a cease-fire (a resolution the U.S. might approve is reportedly in the works). Unlike Canada, the United States has yet to reverse its decision to halt funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), even though accusations that the UNRWA staff in Gaza was filled with Hamas supporters now seem dubious.

Biden’s critics assume that the United States has enormous leverage over this situation and that a firm word from the president—combined with threats to curtail or halt U.S. aid—would quickly force Israel to change course. That assumption deserves scrutiny, however, because weaker states often refuse to comply with U.S. demands, and, sometimes, they get away with it. Serbia rejected NATO demands at the Rambouillet conference in 1999; Iran and North Korea have endured sanctions for decades and remain defiant; Nicolás Maduro is still in power in Venezuela; and Bashar al-Assad still rules in Syria despite earlier U.S. insistence that he “must go.”

These leaders were able to defy U.S. pressure because they were not dependent on American support, and each believed they had more to lose by complying than by hanging tough. But close U.S. allies sometimes resist U.S. pressure, too, as Germany did when it kept building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline despite U.S. objections. Even highly dependent clients can be surprisingly stubborn: Afghan leaders repeatedly failed to implement reforms demanded by U.S. officials, and Ukrainian commanders reportedly rejected U.S. advice when planning their ill-fated counteroffensive last summer. Kabul and Kyiv were almost totally reliant on U.S. material support, but Washington couldn’t get them to do what it wanted. Similarly, Israeli leaders from David Ben-Gurion to Benjamin Netanyahu have resisted U.S. pressure on numerous occasions—though not always—which suggests that the amount of leverage the United States possesses at any given moment depends on more than the sheer magnitude of U.S. largesse. We should not automatically assume that a phone call from Biden and a threat to cut off U.S. aid would get Israel to do America’s bidding.

Where does leverage come from? As it happens, I wrote at length about this issue way back in 1987, in chapter 7 of my first book. Providing client states with economic and military assistance, diplomatic protection, and other benefits gives patrons considerable leverage when they have a near-monopoly on the aid being provided; they care nearly as much as the client about the issue(s) at hand; and there are no domestic obstacles to manipulating the level of aid in order to pressure the client to comply. Leverage decreases if a client can get similar help from someone else, if it cares far more than its patron about the issues in dispute and is therefore willing to pay the price of reduced support, or if the patron cannot reduce its support due to domestic or institutional constraints.

These conditions explain why and how some client states are able and willing to defy the patrons’ preferences. If the patron believes that a weaker ally is intrinsically valuable (e.g., because it is in a vital strategic location, shares similar values, etc.), or if the client’s success is tied to its patron’s reputation or prestige, then the patron will be reluctant to cut a client off even if it is being stubbornly defiant. The Soviet Union had lots of trouble keeping its various Arab client states in line, for example, because they were critical to its influence in the Middle East and the Kremlin didn’t want them to fail (or to realign with the United States). Similarly, the United States could not pressure South Vietnamese or Afghan leaders by threatening to withdraw its support, because it knew these clients would collapse if it did. Presidents Nguyen van Thieu of Vietnam and Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan understood this quite well, of course, which is why Washington found it nearly impossible to control their behavior.

To make matters worse, providing aid reduces one’s leverage in the short term, because there’s no way to take it back once it’s been given. Henry Kissinger captured this dynamic perfectly when he told a journalist, “I ask [Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin to make concessions, and he says he can’t make concessions because Israel is weak. So I give him more arms, and he says he doesn’t need to make concessions because Israel is strong.” Furthermore, weak and dependent clients often care more than their patrons do about the issue(s) at stake, precisely because they are more vulnerable and have more on the line. And if an ally is supported by key political constituencies back home, its patron will be even less likely to use the leverage at its disposal.

Now consider the current state of U.S.-Israel relations and what it tells us about the actual leverage that Biden might bring to bear.

First, although Israel is not as dependent on U.S. support as it was in earlier eras, it is still heavily reliant on access to U.S. weaponry, both advanced weapons systems such as F-35 aircraft or Patriot air defense missiles as well as precision-guided bombs and artillery shells. The United States is not the only country that produces advanced weapons, of course, and Israel has sophisticated defense industries of its own, but reequipping its forces in the unlikely event of a U.S. cutoff would be a difficult and costly process. Israeli strategists have long believed it is vital to maintain a qualitative edge over potential opponents, and the loss of U.S. support would jeopardize its ability to do so over the longer term. Add to this the value of U.S. diplomatic protection—whether in the form of U.N. Security Council vetoes or pressure on other states to refrain from criticizing Israel—and it’s clear that the support Israel gets from the United States would be difficult if not impossible to replace. That’s why many observers believe that all Biden needs to do is threaten to reduce U.S. support and Netanyahu will have no choice but to comply.

Second, although weaker clients are hard to pressure when they care more about the issues at stake, the balance of resolve may now be shifting in ways that strengthen the U.S. hand. The United States has been able to get Israel to alter its behavior when its own interests were more heavily engaged, as was often the case during prior Middle East conflicts. President Dwight D. Eisenhower successfully pressured Israel to withdraw from the Sinai after the Second Arab-Israeli War in 1956, and U.S. officials were able to help persuade Israel to accept cease-fire agreements during the 1969-70 War of Attrition and the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. An angry phone call from President Ronald Reagan to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin also ended a massive Israeli bombing campaign on west Beirut during its 1982 invasion of Lebanon. In each of these cases, U.S. leaders acted forcefully and successfully because they believed that broader U.S. interests were at risk.

It is hard to say which side has greater resolve now, however. Although Netanyahu is increasingly unpopular at home, public opinion supports the military campaign in Gaza, and even Netanyahu’s closest political rivals have stuck with him thus far. Add to this Netanyahu’s opposition to a two-state solution (or any sort of just peace with the Palestinians), his desire to avoid prosecution for corruption, and his dependence on far-right cabinet members to remain in power, and the result is an Israeli leader who might defy an overt U.S. threat to withhold aid. Declaring that Israel is “not a banana republic,” Netanyahu has already insisted that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will proceed to attack the crowded Gaza city of Rafah, despite clear U.S. warnings. But he also agreed to send a delegation to Washington to consult on the matter.

Moreover, the crisis in Gaza is doing real damage to America’s image around the world and making the Biden administration look both heartless and ineffectual. The contradictions in U.S. policy would be comical if the results weren’t so disturbing: Washington is airdropping food to displaced and hungry residents of Gaza while at the same time supplying the military armaments that have forced them to flee and put them at risk of starvation. This situation may also jeopardize Biden’s reelection chances, which gives the White House another reason to get tough.

I am not suggesting that the United States cares more about the situation in Gaza than Israel does—whatever happens in Israel/Palestine is obviously of greater importance to Israelis (and Palestinians) than to those of us who live in comparative safety in the United States. My point is simply that the balance of resolve is moving in Washington’s direction, though by how much is impossible to say.

Lastly, what about domestic constraints? The main reason past U.S. presidents had less leverage than one might suppose was the power of the Israel lobby, which made it politically risky to threaten meaningful reductions in U.S. support. Given the clout that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other groups exercised on Capitol Hill, a president who wanted to put serious pressure on Israel invariably faced harsh criticism, including from members of his own party. President Gerald Ford learned this lesson back in 1975, when he responded to prolonged Israeli intransigence by threatening to reassess the relationship and promptly received a letter signed by 75 senators denouncing his move. Barack Obama learned the same lesson during his first year as president, when he tried to pressure Netanyahu to stop building settlements and faced similar pushback from Republicans and Democrats alike. The lobby’s influence also explains why U.S. negotiators could only use positive inducements—carrots but not sticks—to try to obtain Israeli concessions during the long and ultimately unsuccessful Oslo peace process.

This situation may be gradually changing as well. Defending a state that is running a system of apartheid is not an easy task, especially when it now faces plausible though unproven accusations that it is conducting a genocide. No amount of full-court hasbara can fully negate the visual images streaming out of Gaza, or the disturbing TikTok and YouTube videos that have been posted by IDF soldiers themselves, making it harder for groups like AIPAC to retain influence. When Sen. Chuck Schumer, long one of Israel’s staunchest defenders, gives a speech on the Senate floor declaring that Netanyahu’s policies are bad for Israel, you know that the political winds are shifting. Attitudes in the American body politic are shifting, too, especially among younger people. Although there are still formidable political obstacles to making U.S. support conditional on Israel’s conduct—especially in an election year—it is not as unthinkable as it was a few years ago.

I conclude that Washington does have lots of potential leverage here, and the barriers to using it are lower than they have been in the past. But because Israel’s current leaders remain highly resolved on this issue, even credible threats to reduce U.S. support might not lead them to alter course significantly. Nor is it clear if Biden or his advisors can make the mental adjustments necessary to move from their current failed approach to something more effective. Instead of focusing on whether pressure on Israel would work, the real question to ask is simply whether it is in America’s strategic or moral interest to be actively complicit in a vast and worsening humanitarian tragedy. Even if the United States cannot stop it, it doesn’t have to help make it worse.