An article in Haaretz reports that Israel has suffered several blows in recent days in its historical relations with the United States. And that US President Donald Trump no longer requires Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Tel Aviv for Washington’s nuclear cooperation with Riyadh.
Adding insult to injury to the Israel occupying state, Trump has reached an agreement with the Houthis Ansar Allah group to end US military strikes on Yemen. This is plus the fact the US has began negotiations with Iran without the blessing of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Further to that a US official in the Trump administration also held direct contact with the Hamas.
However, Odeh Basharat in his Haaretz article argues that the most painful blow Israel has ever suffered was Trump’s dismissal of his National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, due to a discussion he had with Netanyahu, behind Trump’s back, about launching a military attack on Iran.
Basharat said the United States has finally begun to wake up and free itself from the shackles of Israel, and act as an independent state, not a “banana republic.” Basharat, a journalist from the Arab world, expressed his astonishment at these developments and wondered whether what was happening before his eyes was real or merely an illusion.
The writer believes that a seismic clash is taking place between the two countries and the two men, and that all the reasons are now converging. “America is gaining its independence 250 years after the beginning of its First Revolutionary War,” referring to the war that took place between 1765 and 1783, when 13 British colonies in North America rejected British colonial rule and gained their independence.
Basharat describes this emancipation as the Great American Rebellion, and attributes its causes to the fact that the world—and the United States as part of it—felt deeply concerned by what the writer, with biting sarcasm, called “Israel’s diplomatic acrobatics,” its “enlightened occupation” of the Palestinian territories, and its “closure (of the Gaza Strip) that allows only air in.”
According to the article, as soon as Israel reaches an agreement on a particular issue, it adds new conditions the next day. Although the Arab states that signed peace agreements with Israel were not required to recognize it as a Jewish and democratic state, only the Palestinians are required to do so, which, as Basharat argues, permanently relegates Israeli Arabs to second-class citizens.
According to the article, it has become clear that Netanyahu is deceiving everyone: Arabs, Jews, and Americans, not just Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, as he previously boasted to Israeli police investigators that he misled and deceived them, then bombed them.
Since the time of David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, the state’s policy has been based on force. In contrast, Trump seems to believe in a policy of carrots and sticks—meaning diplomacy and force combined—according to the article.
The author claims that the US president thinks differently, as demonstrated by his actions toward the Houthis, Iran, and the tariffs. Once he realized he had failed, he took a step back.
As for Israel, its problem does not lie solely with Netanyahu, as Basharat argues, but rather with the fact that it has not offered an alternative to force. Only three of its former prime ministers, according to the article, have taken a different path: Moshe Sharett, whom Ben-Gurion was keen to overthrow; Yitzhak Rabin, who paid for it with his life; and Ehud Olmert, who was ousted before even presenting his plan.
Furthermore, Israel has long treated the White House as a branch of its prime minister’s office, intervening in the wording of every sentence in documents issued by Washington regarding Israel, according to the Haaretz article as reported in Al Jazeera.
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