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United States

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Summary

In Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, the United States supported partition and recognized Israel de facto, but reversed itself in March 1948, threatened sanctions, embargoed arms to the Middle East in a way that “harmed only Israel”, pressed Israel territorially — the Line 31 ultimatum and the December 1948 Sinai withdrawal — and was all the while the Power whose military framework the Zionist leadership privately offered to join, an orientation the book traces from 1947 (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.99-111).

Details

  • On 19 March 1948 Senator Austin proposed suspending partition for a trusteeship; Weizmann calls the blow “fatal to our long nurtured hopes”, and Sharett (30/5/51) called the reversal a “180 degree turn” and “a very grave blow” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.99-100).

  • General Marshall warned Shertok not to come to the USA for help when it got hard, the USA threatened serious sanctions if the Jews proclaimed their state, and Shertok was ordered to counter-threaten that sanctions would push the Jewish state into the arms of the Soviet Union (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.100-101). The book’s conclusion for spring 1948: not only Britain but also the USA and France opposed the UN Resolution on the basis of which the State of Israel was created (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.101).

  • The US arms embargo on the Middle East “harmed only Israel”, Britain supplying the Arab armies and France Syria throughout; the weapons Israel got came from Czechoslovakia, and the heavy bombers acquired in America were smuggled in explicit opposition to US government policy, the dollars for the arms coming from individuals, not the US government (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.102-105). The USA also complained to Prague on 28/7/48 over smuggled planes that landed in Czechia for refuelling and repairs — the landing date is printed as 30/9/48, after the complaint date, as recorded under Open questions on the source page (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.104-105).

  • The United States was one of the three Powers behind the Tripartite Declaration (1950) of 26/5/50, which substituted the three Western governments for the UN as guarantors of the status quo (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.74-76).

  • Territorial and military pressure: the Line 31 ultimatum demanded Israel concede the Negev south of the 31st Parallel, and the government nearly submitted (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.105-106). At the end of December 1948 Washington transmitted Britain’s threat to enter the war under its 1936 treaty with Egypt unless Israeli troops withdrew from Egyptian soil, backing it sharply in the President’s name — “grave consequences”, “review of our attitude”, “no desire to act drastically if” — and by Sunday, January 2nd, “not an Israeli hoof remained in Egypt”, in James McDonald’s account (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.108-109).

  • The private orientation: General Bradley’s memorandum, reported in Haaretz (6/4/1948), analysed the Hebrew Yishuv’s military potential “as an ally in a future world war” as part of “broader military forces”, and a senior State Department official told Haaretz’s correspondent in 1953 that in 1947 a memorandum in Ben-Gurion’s and the Jewish Agency’s name had been submitted to Secretary of State Dean Acheson offering, if America supported a Jewish state, that state’s willingness to integrate itself into a regional framework — the book’s gloss: a synonym for Bradley’s “broader military forces”, the military alliances the USA was striving to create (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.110-111).

  • An American citizen, Fred Harris, served as chief military adviser to the Minister of Defence and the Chief of Staff with access to all IDF information and without an oath of allegiance; Ben-Gurion refused to terminate his service and called it “a blessing” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.115-116).

  • Economic control under the 1949 loan: Section 12 of the first American loan agreement ($100 million) obliged Israel to deliver detailed economic data — including reserves in government and private hands — to the Import-Export Bank at least quarterly; the government suppressed that section when publishing the agreement. John Hagerty, head of the Aid Administration, whose signature was needed to spend any of the money, is “in effect the real finance minister of Israel”; US Agriculture Secretary Ezra Benson refused Agriculture Minister Dayan’s request to raise the egg-and-poultry export quota in mid-1960 (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.121-123). The New York Forward (9/6/55) records that the configuration of political forces in Israel mattered to Washington because its aid should fall “into the right hands”, and Washington delayed the grant in 1953 to force a halt to the Jordan Canal work (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.123-124).

  • The courting and its price: Israel sought a Joint Middle-Eastern Command and US military aid — Sharett (30/7/52) said it had “requested, were requesting and would request military assistance from any possible source, including of course the government of the USA” — and signed the 1/7/52 mutual-assistance accord under which even arms bought for full price were under primary US jurisdiction as to use and the US Secretary of Defense would control supplies and training; yet the official US table (Senate, 14/3/60) shows military-aid transfers 1950-1959 of 49,761,000 to Iraq, 7,050,000 to Lebanon (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.130-141). John Foster Dulles told the Senate in February 1956 the USA “never seriously considered a military alliance with Israel” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.134).

  • Dulles’s 2/6/53 televised speech laid down an “impartial” policy of cultivating the Arabs — Le Monde’s gloss: secure of the hooked fish, he minimized aid to Israel — and Byroade (April 1954) called US policy simply “pro-American”, grounded in Middle East oil: the US share of regional oil production rose from 13.9% (1938) to 59.0% (1952), with 64% of reserves in American companies (UN survey, 6/7/1956) (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.147-150).

Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, Britain, Soviet Union, Line 31 ultimatum, Tripartite Declaration (1950), James McDonald, Fred Harris, Non-alignment, John Hagerty, John Foster Dulles, Abba Eban

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