The United States has shown staunch support for Israel since its birth as a state. But that was before it decided to decimate the Palestinian territories.
At the height of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, Israel was seen as a crucial U.S. ally.
In 1982, Alexander Haig, U.S. Secretary of State during the administration of President Ronald Reagan said this: “Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk, does not carry even one American soldier and is located in a critical region for American national security.”
Washington saw Israel as an asset worth funding with economic aid and military arms, from fighter jets and artillery rounds to sophisticated missiles.
But the logic that prompted the aircraft carrier parallel no longer applies. Israel has become the Middle East’s nuclear-armed regional superpower. Still, over the decades that the United States maintained this special relationship, few in the establishment wondered aloud whether the vaunted asset could turn into a strategic liability.
The expected nomination by President-elect Donald Trump of a former state governor to be the next U.S. ambassador to Israel hints at a new chapter in U.S. policy.
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee is on record saying that he doesn’t believe that Israel is occupying the West Bank, that instead, the Israeli settlements that much of the world considers illegal is land Israel has a biblical right to.
This cheers far-right members of the Israeli government who seek to annex the West Bank, part of which is under Palestinian control.