If I could pick one foreign policy issue for the next president, I wouldn’t have to think about it: fix US-Israeli policy and secure Palestine.


When I was helping pile as much ammunition onto Camp Fallujah as possible, in preparation for the impending assault on the insurgent stronghold, a rumor flashed through the junior officers in my battalion that the commanding general had received a brief on the insurgency in Iraq and that he himself had said that “there was no military solution (alone)” to the security problem in Iraq.

As obvious as this was, it was a revelation to us in that we had believed that universally, American leaders planned to bomb and bulldoze all of our country’s problems into the ground. This realistic look at the situation in Iraq should be used to view all of our political challenges: there is not always a singular solution to a problem and sometimes the solution that works (paying off sheiks, in the case of Iraq) may not be the one that maximizes your personal utility as a national leader or warrior.


Dissect any call to Jihad, peruse any manifesto against the US by Islamic agents, interview any Syrian on the streets of Damascus or banlieusard on the outskirts of Paris, and I’ll hedge that 90% of them will tell you that their main beef with America is about Palestine.

The Palestinians have been complaining about their mistreatment for decades. The Jihadis have used it to build credibility for their causes and then compounded its importance exponentially when America invaded Iraq- the persecution of Arabs, and more generally Muslims by proxy and outright invasion has been the call to arms that couldn’t be stifled by propaganda or politics. Indeed, if you look at it from an outside perspective, it is a compelling argument.

There is a deep complexity in the Palestine-Israel issue that has caught many American politicians in its snare- having them bouncing back and forth from bogus platitudes towards Israel to bogus talk about reform directed to the Palestinians, couched in (now transparent) threats to a people already stuck on the bottom. While I recognize the layers of risk and investment as well as terrorism and war that have combined to make the Palestinian problem what it is today, I am going to ignore the tip-toeing and cut straight to what I consider America’s best and only course of action: switching sides.


Among Americans, understanding the history of Palestine is immeasurably more important than understanding the history of Iraq, and any reading of this history must account for one truth: since the Greeks arrived in Palestine, the region has always been ruled by foreigners. And while there is debate about when the Palestinians of today arrived there, or how closely related Palestinian and Jewish DNA actually are, the simple truth that Zionism in its practice is no less a form of conquest than that of the Turks or Crusaders in their times, has as lasting an effect on Palestine as slavery does on America.

Another fact is that Israel- the implementation of Zionism- was realized in Palestine through both political lobbies and terrorism, just as the Palestinian authority of today was. Inasmuch as the Irgun and Lehi attacks helped force the British to sponsor the establishment of the Israeli state- PLO and ANO violence helped bring the Palestinians to the UN. Through America’s myopic lens of terrorism-centric reasoning, it figures that Israel and Palestine today are both as legitimate and illegitimate as each other.


So why is this important to Americans? If America is going to extricate itself from the Middle East, restore its reputation as a proponent of freedom and democracy in a context other than hypocrisy, and continue its international war against sectarian terrorists, it must make peace in Palestine and the security of the Palestinians its top priority. (Israeli security has already and always featured as a top American agenda item.)

When Diana Buttu, a Stanford-educated lawyer working as a negotiator for the PLO, comes on C-SPAN on the eve of the Annapolis peace talks and tells Americans that what the PLO is demanding is simply the enforcement of international law (Israel returning territory acquired during the Six Day War, and allowing Palestinian refugees to return to their homes), it’s hard to understand why we won't rush to deliver this. Under the UN mandate and the 1948 treaty, the Israelis had no right to occupy and settle in the West Bank.


But America is not Israel, so how are we responsible? In many ways, both valid or simply in perception, America and Israeli policy are deeply linked in opinions found in most parts of the world outside of the US.

Start with the most painful touch points- when a TOW missile comes off the rails of a Hughes AH-64 Apache helicopter and blows out a Gaza City shanty, or a round fired from a Colt M16 hits a Palestinian girl in the head, the tools of death the Israelis are using are all American-made. To Palestinians, these weapons are as iconic as the AK-47 and RPG are to us. This serves to link the Israeli military state firmly to the American military industrial culture. When Muslims around the world see footage from Iraq and Gaza, the only difference is the insignia on the tanks and indeed, I’ve found several pictures on the Internet whose captions accidentally confused the two war zones.

As a sectarian state, albeit a democracy, politically, Israel is an inconsistency in our rhetorical platform. If we go around telling the world’s Islamic nations to embrace democracy and the liberalization that allows multiculturalism, how can we continue to support a country with a national religion that has created apartheid?

America has sponsored Israel with rhetoric and military aid, but our support for the country goes deeper: American monetary grants to Israel account for approximately one third of all US foreign aid. This staggering imbalance is not lost on the Muslim world- the US taxpayer holds the receipts for both Israeli defense and recent attempts to reinvigorate the Israeli economy.


America needs to recognize the weight this issue carries and make it the top foreign policy priority by becoming an advocate for Palestinians the same way it claims to be for oppressed peoples everywhere from Tibet to Afghanistan. To do this, America must de-link its comprehension of the Palestinian issue from its international view on terrorism. While Palestinian terrorism is reprehensible in the same way Israeli military rule is, neither should become ideological obstacles for our country to help create true and lasting peace. It seems that we've painted ourselves into an ideological corner in regard to terrorism and will allow this to cost the Palestinians, Israelis, and ourselves success.

Military force and promiscuous violence- backed by the US- as a solution to the Palestinian intifada is not viable. “Innovations” in policy like building a wall around Palestinian territories to stop suicide bombers will not keep them out of Jerusalem- it will only embolden them. If you want Palestinians to stop fighting for freedom and safety, you have to concede that the best way to do that would be to ensure their freedom and safety. American leaders should reverse the national bias from Israel to Palestine and work arduously to secure rights, territory, and safety for Palestine, per international law.

Without a doubt, this is the core issue at the crux of anti-American sentiment in the Middle East, but what will it take to break America out of its uninformed, Eurocentric perspective on Palestine? It's going to take a leader who separates the solution that works from the one (s)he wants, and is willing to burn the political capital, perhaps in a career-ending fashion, to achieve this goal. If I can break the groupthink, you can too- I’m not only a veteran of America’s Iraq conquest and a violence-savvy Marine- I’m also Jewish, the descendant of refugees. What defines us are not our demographics but how we think- and what we do.


Further Reading: Among countless articles and books on this subject, I recommend National Geographic on Bethlehem as an insightful introduction. Additionally, these maps from the BBC provide an excellent graphic explanation.

Do Something: Your Senators Your Representatives

Edits made 9 Apr 08