Two powers, two sides of the world, the same goal: to safeguard their interests. What is not said of the complicated relationship between the US and Israel will never find in the history books, and (if we hoped) nor the meeting on March 3 to 16 thousand US Congress before the AIPAC delegates will be helpful . The repartee distance between Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama, on the eve of the meeting, pointed out in a clear break points between the two parties. The excuse? The Iranian nuclear activities.
But let's review a summary of the highlights of the relationship between Israel and the United States over the past 70 years, highlighted by Davide Frattini, this morning, the Corriere della Sera, one of the most important Italian newspapers.
"Ten weeks in the cold of Washington and frost of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In December 1941, David Ben-Gurion rents a two-room suite at the Ambassador hotel where expecting a phone call: asked the American president a date (the just fifteen minutes, assures) to promote the cause of the Jewish state. That call never comes, and yet when the May 14, 1948 Ben-Gurion declared the founding of Israel, the US is the first country to recognize it. Eleven minutes after.
Since then the special report was never interrupted. He has endured some bruising diplomatic, lived the moments of silence and meetings sullen, has overcome these crises and - analysts predict - will exceed even that between Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama. Because the current American leader - Chemi Shalev noted in the newspaper Haaretz - is not among the most paranoid as they would like to present the assistants of the Prime Minister.
George Bush has torchiato Israeli governments with more aggression - and retaliation far more concrete - Susan Rice, the national security adviser to Obama, which he called "destructive to our ties," the visit of Netanyahu. In 1991, Yitzhak Shamir still pretends that the construction in the settlements and threatens to block the $ 10 billion in aid. During a press conference at the White House, he complains of how influential the Jewish lobby and a little later estimated that the United States give to Israel, "the equivalent of $ 1,000 for every citizen." A lack of empathy towards the Middle East ally, summed up by James Baker, his secretary of state: "When the Israelis are ready to talk seriously about peace, can call the White House. The number is 001-202-456-1414. " Aversion even more synthesized by Baker in a private conversation: "Fuck Jews, so they do not vote for us." And is a self-fulfilling prophecy: the elections of 1992 Bill Clinton wins 78 percent of American Jews, Bush only 15 percent, the worst result for a Republican in the last twenty-eight years.
Stalls diplomats do not arise only from different strategic positions. Clinton failed to recreate the harmony that Netanyahu had with Yitzhak Rabin and which facilitated the Oslo Accords in 1994. He considered the Israeli prime minister - then in his first term - arrogant and avoided if he could meet him. When Netanyahu is received for the first time at the White House in 1996, Clinton leaves the room and exclaims assistants, "Who does he think he, who c ... is the superpower here?".
This is the lesson that Ronald Reagan decides to impart to Menachem Begin. In 1981 punishes him for having bombed - without informing the Americans - the nuclear reactor at Osirak in Iraq: order to stop the delivery of new jet aviation Israel and the United States to the United Nations condemning the raid against Saddam Hussein. "The decision to publicly humiliate our traditional ally - said the then Conservative William Safire in the New York Times - has not given us a new friend among the Arabs and destroyed the confidence to push Israel to take risks to achieve peace." The words chosen by Begin are well harsher than those written by Safire, when retaliation summons US Ambassador Samuel Lewis, "What expression would be: punish Israel? We are one of your vassal? We are a banana republic? We are teenagers who do not behave well when they are slapped? Let me say on who comprises my government: it is people who grew up in the resistance, people who fought and suffered. There frighten with your threats. "
The thirteen days of negotiations in September 1978 at Camp David begins with a common prayer desired by Rosalynn, the wife of President Jimmy Carter, and end with the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. Amid screams, suitcases made and unmade, a chess tournament between Begin and Zbigniew Brzezinski, adviser to Carter. Israeli Prime wins 3 games out of 5, not enough to dissolve the mistrust comes to defining Camp David, "a concentration camp de luxe." He knows, however, that Israel needs the US, will shake hands with Anwar Sadat. "
Now, at undermining relations between the two parties, there has also put Iran. The incessant activity Tehran's nuclear sounds like a threat to Israel, which would take a substantial support from the United States to stop the one that keeps Jerusalem as a constant threat to the country. Obama, meanwhile, has announced that the negotiations will end with a freeze of ten nuclear activity by Iran and nothing more. After the meeting, Netanyahu wanted to tone by declaring that Israel and the United States, as a family than as friends, agree that Iran should not have nuclear weapons, but that the two sides do not agree on the modalities of intervention. Diplomatic statement that, rather than aiming to bring the clear between the two superpowers, seems the personification of sociological theory "have a common enemy stimulates collaboration among men", which perhaps has always been the strong point of the report USA- Israel.