View of common fears drives US-Israel policy

WASHINGTON -- Six days after Israel unleashed its military in Lebanon, hoping to decapitate the militant group Hezbollah, a senior US policymaker in Washington described the administration's feelings about the war. Couching the conflict as a proxy battle in a larger US-led struggle against Iran, Hezbollah's backer, he told a reporter: ``Hopefully, we will win."

The recent conflict in Lebanon has showcased what many foreign policy analysts see as a new era in US-Israeli relations: For the first time in Israel's history, key figures in the US government believe that the same forces that threaten Israel -- Islamic terrorists and a nuclear-armed Iran -- also present the greatest strategic threat to the United States.

``The president doesn't see any difference between American interests and Israeli interests with regard to the Middle East now," said Edward Walker Jr., former deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, who retired during Bush's first term.

``We had always approached [conflict between Israel and its neighbors] in a balanced way, assuming that we could be the catalyst for an agreement," said Walker, now president of the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based think tank. ``But after Sept. 11, Bush saw it in a sense of `It's us against them,' and the Israelis are with us, fighting the same enemy."

During many past Israeli conflicts, long before the war on terror increased the stakes for the United States in the region, American presidents have called the Israeli prime minister to urge restraint. Often they got the results they wanted, but not always.

In 1973, Henry Kissinger -- fearing the reaction of his Arab allies -- told Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir that she could not count on US help if Israel preemptively struck its neighbors. Israel took the guidance -- and the first hit -- in that war, and the US government later sent a critical airlift of military hardware that helped assure a victory.

When he was president, George H.W. Bush delayed lucrative loans to Israel in an effort to stop the building of settlements, a move that cost him political support from powerful advocates for Israel . President Bill Clinton personally pressed the Israelis to engage in peace talks with the Palestinians. Even Ronald Reagan, whom many Israel advocates in the United States consider the best friend that Israel has ever had in the White House, stopped shipments of cluster munitions, saying that Israel's use of them in civilian areas in Lebanon in the 1980s violated US laws.

But the younger Bush has played a far more hands-off role than his predecessors, analysts say. Shortly after he took office, he told his National Security Council Staff that he wasn't going to be ``another Clinton," Walker said. ``He was not going to be personally engaged."

Indeed, throughout the monthlong war that began on July 12, Bush did not talk to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert until last Friday at 4:50 p.m. -- an hour before the UN Security Council voted on a cease-fire. Bush's silence was widely interpreted as an ``unprecedented green light" to continue the attacks on Lebanon.

``I would argue that the distance Bush put between himself and Olmert -- far from being the cold shoulder -- was `You know what needs to be done,' " said Aaron David Miller , an adviser to six secretaries of state on the Middle East and scholar at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

In Bush's public remarks, he urged the Israelis to refrain from harming civilians and Lebanon's fragile government, but he also lent moral support to Israel, casting the conflict as ``part of a broader struggle between freedom and terror that is unfolding across the region."

``We don't advise Israel on its military options," Bush told reporters Tuesday. ``But as far as I'm concerned, if somebody shoots at Israeli soldiers, tries to kill a soldier from Israel, then Israel has the right to defend herself."

Bush administration officials say one area of future disagreement could be on the issue of Palestinians. Bush became the first US president to call for the creation of a Palestinian state, and aides say that, despite the turmoil, he is still committed to that vision.

But analysts and Bush supporters say Bush is less inclined to pressure Israel to make concessions for peace than previous administrations.

In the past, US officials say, much of the United States' involvement in Israel's conflicts stemmed from a feeling of moral obligation to ensure that the nation of Jewish refugees survived, as well as a desire to balance the concerns of Arab allies who opposed Israel. Now, Israel has evolved into a strategic ally in a war on terror that directly threatens the United States.

``The Bush administration and the president himself tends to look at so much that happens in the Middle East through the prism of terrorism, and in that context, he is very sympathetic to very aggressive actions by Israel to respond," said Arthur Hughes, who served as deputy chief of mission in Tel Aviv in the '80s and director general of peacekeepers in the Sinai Peninsula from 1998-2004.

In the recent conflict, the US government rushed previously approved shipments of jet fuel and munitions to Israel, amid criticism from some human rights groups that Israel was carrying out airstrikes with disproportionate force that exacerbated civilian casualties.

Israel's military is almost completely reliant on US-made artillery and fighter jets, much of which is paid for with US military aid, according to William Hartung , a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute, a New York-based foreign policy think tank. Since Israel signed the Camp David Accords making peace with Egypt, it has been given more than $3 billion annually in US aid, more than half of which goes to military funding.

``Israel gets top-of-the-line weaponry that they might not sell to other countries," Hartung said, adding that Israel is the only nation in the world that is allowed to spend some US military aid on development of domestically produced weapons.

In addition to financial support, the US government has also given Israel critical political backing. In 1948, the United States became the first country to recognize Israel, 11 minutes after Israelis declared a state.

Israelis say that despite the massive US support and the two nations' common interests, Israel always has the final say on its military operations and strategic decisions.

``Had the US come in to say, `Under no circumstances do more than militarily showing your displeasure,' it would have had a major impact on Israeli thinking, there is no doubt," said Chuck Freilich , former deputy national security adviser in Israel, of Israel's response after the July 12 Hezbollah raid on Israeli soldiers.

``But even if it looks like a classic patron-client relationship, in reality, it isn't. Israel maintains a lot of freedom of movement," Freilich said. ``Israel fights its own battles, unlike other allies. . . . What makes it even more unique is that the US accepts that, and says that's the way it should be."