Obama Takes Careful Approach to Israeli Raid

WASHINGTON (June 1) -- The raid on a Gaza aid flotilla that ended with at least nine civilians dead left Israel once more isolated from the world community, with only one country to keep it company: the United States.

While the State Department expressed regret over the incident, it avoided the sort of condemnation of Israel heard around the world. When an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council condemned "acts" aboard the relief ship, the language was squishier and less anti-Israel than Palestinians, Turkey and Arab nations had wanted. Even the council's call for an investigation took on an ambiguous cast thanks to U.S. pressure behind the scenes.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs today refused to say whether Israel's blockade of Gaza should be lifted. He said the U.S. is working to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza but echoed Israel's claim that it was acting in self-defense, saying, "I do think it's helpful to understand this is a blockade to not allow weapons to get into the hands of Hamas."

The cautious response of the Obama White House, which so far has had frostier dealings with Israel than previous administrations, is in keeping with Washington's historically special relationship with the Jewish state.

When European and Arab countries demanded an immediate cease-fire to fighting between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon in 2006, the United States balked at putting pressure on the Jewish state. President George W. Bush's delay gave Israeli forces more time to weaken Hezbollah.

Similarly, when Israel struck Gaza in December 2008, the Bush White House blamed Hamas rocket attacks for provoking the incursion. The timing in the waning days of the Bush administration was said to have been planned by Israel to take advantage of its stalwart support before a less certain ally, Barack Obama, moved into the White House.

Yet Obama, while reaching out to the Arab and Muslim world to repair some of the damage inflicted by his predecessor, has so far refused to abandon Israel. That doesn't surprise veteran Middle East observers.

"This is hardly unusual. It's even de rigueur," Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. Middle East negotiator and adviser to six secretaries of state, told AOL News. "What is difficult for many to grasp is this relationship is grounded, founded on an extraordinarily resilient basis which has survived for 62 years. ... The crisis will end, and on the other side the United States must maintain its own credibility with both" Israel and the Palestinians.

"The United States is the one party that is actually trying to get peace negotiations going. There is always a fear that if the United States overreacts in a crisis or goes confrontational, it may jeopardize any progress," Shibley Telhami, a University of Maryland specialist on the Arab-Israeli conflict, told AOL News. "Israel has a lot of support in the U.S. Congress, and every administration is very mindful of that support."

Still, relations with the Obama White House have at times been rocky. In March, Israel announced 1,600 new housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem, where the U.S. opposes further Jewish settlement, during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden. It was an embarrassing bit of timing and, as Biden put it, "precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now." The episode produced headlines declaring U.S.-Israel ties the "worst in 35 years."

More recently, Israel -- which has a policy of deliberate ambiguity over its possession of nuclear weapons -- chafed at a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty conference in which the Obama administration appeared more interested in reducing nuclear arsenals than considering Israel's needs to defend itself in a dangerous neighborhood.

All this and more was to be patched up today in a meeting in Washington between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But Netanyahu canceled his visit to return home to deal with the crisis.

Instead, the diplomatic story of the day was the visit of Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who told Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that his country was disappointed in the tepid U.S. response and demanded stronger condemnation of Israel.

If the Obama administration does ratchet up its rhetoric, it won't be the first time the United States has turned up the heat on Israel:

• In 1956, when Israel joined France and Britain to go to war with Egypt over its plan to nationalize the Suez Canal, President Dwight D. Eisenhower put his foot down and forced its otherwise close allies to withdraw. The Suez Crisis would forever alter U.S. foreign policy, pushing aside European hegemony and making the U.S the main power player in the Middle East.
• In 1991, President George H.W. Bush refused to back down on his demand that $10 billion in loan guarantees sought by Israel wouldn't be used to expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. When the Israeli government tried to do an end-around to win approval in Congress, Bush famously lamented he was "up against some powerful political forces. ... I heard today there was something like 1,000 lobbyists on the Hill working on the other side of the question. We've got one lonely little guy down here doing it."

Still, the flotilla firestorm is unlikely to sink U.S.-Israeli relations.

"The United States doesn't always in every way give Israel a free hand to do what it wants, but in this case the Israelis have a case to make" that it was acting in self-defense against activists who provoked the deadly violence, said Steven Cook, a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. Noting that more than 1,300 Palestinians died in Israel's 2008 Gaza operation, he called this "a relatively minor incident," adding, "For the current press cycle it is important, but ultimately it is not the kind of thing that is going to rock U.S.-Israeli relations one way or another."