Israel Should Decline the Offer of an American Defense Treaty

Israel Should Decline the Offer of an American Defense Treaty

Dr. Yitzhak Klein

Opinion: A defense treaty with the US will lead to the infringement of Israeli sovereignty and the disappearance of our tradition of defending ourselves that has assured Israel's existence since before the establishment of the state.

As part of the trilateral negotiations between Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United States, talk of an American-Israeli defense treaty is in the air. The Saudis want such a treaty with the United States, and the Saudi-Israel peace treaty is in the interest of both nations. Contrary to what is commonly assumed, it is not in Israel’s interest to sign such a treaty with the United States. The security of both countries will be stronger without it.

An American-Israeli security treaty does not mean that Israel receives a carte blanche to do whatever it feels necessary to defend its security, safe in the conviction that the United States will protect it against the worst. 

On the contrary, such a guarantee will come with the requirement that Israel do nothing that the United States perceives as reckless or provocative, which would have obligated the United States to save Israel from any mess it gets into.

The United States will expect Israel to conform to its own perception of Israel’s security needs. A security treaty may also lead the United States to question Israel’s desire to obtain certain weapons systems (with American aid, i.e.at American expense,) or to preserve Israel’s qualitative military superiority in the Middle East. After all, an American administration can argue, we’re here to protect you, so what do you need all this stuff for?

Fundamentally, the best guarantee for Israel’s security – for any nation’s security – is the autonomy to decide when its security is at stake and to act accordingly. No treaty with a foreign nation can take the place of a nation’s ability to decide on its own what it needs to do to defend itself. Today, Israel serves America’s current security needs in myriad ways that a defense treaty will not reinforce. What Israel needs from the United States is what it already possesses: An American guarantee that if it sells weapons to potential enemies of Israel, America will provide Israeli access to the weapons Israel needs to ensure its qualitative superiority.

As democratic nations in a world challenged by rising authoritarianism, Israel and the United States share fundamental interests. That does not mean that their interests are in every respect equivalent. America’s perception of Israel’s security needs will always be colored by the United States’ perception of its own interests, and America’s perception of what it needs to do to live up to any security guarantee it gives to Israel will not always be congruent with what Israel believes needs to be done. Too often American policy – like many nations’ policies – will be governed by myopia and short-term interests.