For many years, under Israeli leaders from both left and right and American presidents from both the Democratic and Republican parties, Israelis were told they could not have their cake and eat it too: They could not keep millions of people under military occupation and still retain the decades-old special relationship with the United States. Israelis were convinced that the price of American support was concessions to the Arab side. But ever since President Barack Obama turned out to be a toothless orator, and even more so since Donald Trump took office, Israelis are realizing that they can have their cake and eat it too. They are not even required to throw the Arabs a few crumbs.
Fear of President Jimmy Carter’s long arm was a decisive factor in the decision by Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s government to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula as part of the 1979 Israeli peace treaty with Egypt. The refusal by President George H.W. Bush to accept Israeli settlement policy and his willingness to impose economic sanctions on Israel paved the way for the Likud Party’s defeat in the 1992 elections and the following year’s historic signing by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of the Oslo Accord with the Palestinians. It was only under heavy pressure by President Bill Clinton that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed the 1997 Hebron protocol on troop redeployments in the West Bank with the Palestinians. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s decision to withdraw all Israeli troops and settlements from the Gaza Strip in 2005 stemmed from his desire to avoid clashing with President George W. Bush over his 2003 road map for a two-state resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Netanyahu would not have uttered the words “we are ready to agree to a real peace agreement, a demilitarized Palestinian state side by side with the Jewish state” in his landmark June 2009 Bar-Ilan speech had he not feared President Obama, who had pledged in Cairo just a few days earlier to push ahead with the establishment of such a state.
