http://www.mideastoutpost.com/archives/get-over-it-it-is-not-and-has-never-been-a-special-relationship-ruth-king.html……FROM OUTPOST SEPTEMBER 2012
Partisans of Israel from left and right keep evoking the so called America/Israel special relationship. The left worries that a muscular Israeli response to a mortal threat will threaten the relationship, and the right frets that it has seriously frayed under the Obama administration.
They are both wrong. The so called special relationship is a chimera.
Let’s revisit some history.
In closing critical international shipping lanes, the nationalization of the Suez Canal by Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser in July, 1956, was a serious provocation to Great Britain, France and Israel. Furthermore after continual terrorism and threats Israel had credible intelligence that the Arabs were preparing for war. On Oct. 29, 1956, Israeli forces, directed by Moshe Dayan, launched a combined air and ground assault into Egypt’s Sinai peninsula. Early Israeli successes were reinforced by an Anglo-French invasion along the canal. The November 6 cease fire, demanded by the United Nations and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles led to a total withdrawal by Israel, England and France in exchange for reassurances that the U.N. would monitor the Sinai and keep open the Straits of Tiran crucial for Israel’s shipping. That was special only in the thinly disguised animosity of John Foster Dulles.
Border incidents and terrorism continued against Israel for the next decade. Egypt’s President Nasser escalated his blood curdling threats to destroy Israel and in 1967 he requested the withdrawal of United Nations forces from the Sinai and closed the Gulf of Aqaba and Straits of Tiran.
When Israel complained of these flagrant violations of the 1956 agreement, Secretary of State Dean Rusk and President Lyndon Johnson declared that they could not find the agreement and therefore could not issue any warning to Egypt. Israel launched a pre-emptive lightning strike which crippled the forces of Syria, Egypt and Jordan arrayed against it. By the time Israel heard Dean Rusk’s demands for a cease fire it was all over, and the era of so called “occupation,” which has been flogged by every successive administration, began.
In October of 1973 it was clear to Israel and confirmed by international intelligence that Arab States were preparing a major strike on Israel. President Nixon, already beset by escalating scandal permitted his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to pressure Israel to avoid a preemptive strike. Israel bowed to the hard fisted demands and on Yom Kippur, the combined forces of Egypt and Syria with logistical support from all the Arab states attacked. Israel’s desperate pleas for re-supply of dwindling ordnance were ignored by the State and Defense Departments. Finally, Nixon ordered an immediate air-lift. While dispute continues as to whether it was Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger or Kissinger who held up the resupply, what is clear is that when Israel regrouped and began a counteroffensive, Kissinger demanded an immediate cease fire. Negotiations over Israel’s retreat from the Sinai continued into the administration of Gerald Ford in which Kissinger remained as Secretary of State. Largely as a result of Kissinger’s crude threats of a “reassessment of America’s relations with Israel” Israel withdrew back across the Suez Canal and several miles inland from the east bank. All territorial gains in Syria made during the war were given up.
