Foreign Policy Regarding Israel and Palestine Term Paper

Foreign policy regarding Israel & Palestine

The entire issue of Israel and Palestine is complicated by the position that the state of Israel is Jewish, to whom the Western countries have a guilt complex due to the actions of Hitler, and the fact that Palestine is Islamic and Islamic countries control most of the available petroleum of the world.

In looking at foreign policy, the main element of relationship between two countries when they are not neighbors, or closely connected through history is the commercial relationship, and that is what determines their decisions on bilateral and multilateral maters. The entire area of Middle East is where the American arms go, and this creates a lot of profits for the weapons manufacturers in U.S.. Even after the Gulf War has ended, and before the war in Iraq started, the total arms export to this region was more than $60 billion. Most of the countries in the region have military dictatorships or there is a close nexus between the military and the rulers, and thus arms sales are an important component of the relationships with these countries. These sales also help the ruling government in U.S. As it helps the military industries as there is not such a high demand for arms in the rest of the world. The military sales to Israel is $3 billion a year, and is supposed to be for the reason of protecting the country from its Arab neighbors, 80% of whose arms have also come from U.S.. (10 Things to Know about U.S. Policy in the Middle East) There can be a statement that this is military policy and foreign policy is different: then the question would come as to what is the role of foreign policy in the relationship between these countries?

For more than 20 years, the problem for peace in this area has been based on the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Palestine to International boundaries. There seems to be a movement in that direction now, though no one knows how far that will proceed. Till earlier periods, U.S. had rejected the international acceptance and taken a view closer to the Israeli policies: have Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty, have a limited withdrawal from occupied territories, allow for confiscation of Palestinian land and not permit a Palestinian state outside of Israeli strictures. This interpretation of autonomy for Palestinians has given them control of one-fourth of West Bank, and that is also tightly controlled by Israel. The blame for incidents is ascribed to Palestinians by Israel and United States, though other organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and…