The fifth and final chapter examines the controversial executive agreements connected to Sinai II, concluded in September 1975, in the context of a congressional effort to restrict the broad use of such agreements. In order to make Sinai II acceptable to both Israel and Egypt (and to avoid another war and oil embargo), the United States entered into a series of commitments that signaled a new stage in U.S.-Israel relations. The agreements, made in secret and central to Sinai II, committed the United States to providing for Israel’s military and economic security and pledged to not advance any steps in the peace process without Israel’s approval. Numerous legislators argued that the secret agreements marked a dramatic and questionable shift in U.S.-Israel relations and that they resembled treaties, which required Senate approval. Based on research from the Congressional Record, Center for Legislative Archives at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and congressional hearing reports, the chapter shows that legislators felt handcuffed by Sinai II. They felt obligated to pass a resolution to allow for U.S. technicians to man an early-warning station in the Sinai Peninsula in order to preserve the agreement between Israel and Egypt and thereby prevent another war. After wars involving Israel and Egypt in 1956, 1967, 1969–1970, and 1973, another war seemed quite possible to U.S. officials. But by passing the resolution, Congress also authorized, by what Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) called “backdoor” approval, the secret agreements that committed the United States to providing for the future economic, military, and energy needs of Israel, regardless of Israel’s willingness to adhere to the spirit of U.N. Resolution 242.
The May 1975 Senate letter forced the Ford administration to quit threatening to withhold military aid from Israel and instead buy the Sinai II agreement. But in order to preserve the agreement between Israel and Egypt, Kissinger’s diplomacy, in turn, forced Congress to approve of U.S. technicians and, by extension, of the secret and open-ended executive agreements with Israel. Neither U.S. presidents nor Congress wanted to advance U.S.-Israel relations to such an extreme but did so to prevent another war in the Middle East, which threatened to bring with it another oil embargo and possibly superpower confrontation, and to draw Egypt away from the Soviet Union. The United States developed an uneasy alliance with Israel, not by intent, but out of desperation.
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Johnson, Congress, and the Special Relationship
An American Commitment to the Survival of Israel
An American commitment to the survival of Israel became evident before and during the Six-Day War in June 1967. For the first time after the Holocaust, Jews in Israel felt genuinely afraid of being overrun.1 Arab leaders, particularly Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, refused to recognize Israel and continually threatened to destroy it or to drive it into the sea. Nasser aimed to generate popular support through bombastic rhetoric and likely did not really believe Egypt—or any collection of Arab forces—could, or would, destroy Israel. But threats to exterminate Israel could not be ignored. Israel also contributed to the rising tensions in the region with its attack on Samu, a Jordanian village, in November 1966, and needless provocations with Syria, which led to an air battle in April 1967.
While the threats against Israel added to Nasser’s popular appeal in the Arab world, they encouraged American support for Israel just as much. As events moved toward war, U.S. legislators took to the House and Senate floors and collectively declared an uncompromising commitment to protecting Israel. After the war, the United States supported Israel’s decision to remain in the occupied territories (Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip, West Bank, Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem) until Arab states agreed to make peace with Israel. That decision, which would guide U.S. policy for decades to follow, was originally rooted in an American commitment to securing the safety of Israel.
Map: After the Six-Day War, Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights, Sinai Peninsula, and East Jerusalem. The Johnson administration initiated land-for-peace diplomacy, whereby Israel would give back Arab lands in return for peace agreements.
Lyndon Johnson felt a strong affection for the State of Israel, but like the presidents before him, he aimed to pursue an evenhanded policy in the Middle East. He often refused Israeli requests for weapons in order to stave off an arms race with the Soviet Union. Unable to prevent an arms race, Johnson tried to avoid selling weapons disproportionally in the region, to support American claims to evenhandedness. Despite his efforts, Johnson became the first U.S. president to sell offensive weapons to Israel. Nevertheless, Johnson’s decisions should be considered within the context of a desire to balance weapons sales between Israel and moderate Arab states and to limit such sales altogether. As Zach Levey has argued, Johnson wanted to avoid entering into a strategic relationship with Israel.2 Israel, for its part, wanted to expand a special relationship into a strategic alliance built on military aid. Walter Hixson has ably demonstrated that the Israel lobby played an important role in pressuring Johnson into adopting a decidedly pro-Israel position.3
The U.S. Congress emerged as a vocal branch of dissent to Johnson’s foreign policy with Israel and, in particular, to his reluctance to sell weapons to Israel. Legislators forced Johnson to publicly contend with the issue of weapons sales to Israel by using legislation (binding and nonbinding), letters, speeches, and official statements to criticize the president’s unwillingness to better arm Israel. These efforts laid a foundation for an ongoing critique of presidential foreign policy in the region that contributed to a dramatic increase of weapons sales. Congress legitimized dissent of presidential foreign policymaking in both East Asia and the Middle East during Johnson’s presidency and in that way affected presidential decision-making in both regions.
Several scholars have analyzed U.S.-Israel relations during Johnson’s presidency; however, no work situates U.S.-Israel relations within the context of increased congressional activity in foreign policy during the LBJ years in order to explore how a Vietnam War–era Congress impacted the U.S.-Israel special relationship.4 This chapter attempts to fill that void.
U.S. Weapons Sales to Israel prior to the 1967 War
The persistent instability in the Middle East, which stemmed in part from the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict, worsened during Lyndon Johnson’s presidency and brought about more U.S. involvement in the region. The 1948–1949 Arab-Israeli War was a War for Independence for Jews, who administered the newly declared State of Israel, but a catastrophe (nakba) for the stateless Palestinian Arabs, who did not receive the allotment of land designated by the U.N. General Assembly in November 1947. Approximately 700,000 Arabs either fled or were forced from their homes during the 1948–1949 war, which started the Palestinian refugee crisis. Border conflicts persisted throughout the 1950s, and conditions grew worse during the 1960s. Tensions arose between Syria and Israel over water rights to the headwaters of the Jordan River, with escalations in 1964 and 1965.5 The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), created in 1964, declared its central goal to be the destruction of the State of Israel. Yasser Arafat, the leader of Fatah (the largest and most important member organization of the PLO), continued his instigation of terrorist attacks against Israel.6 The PLO found more support for a war against Israel after a Syrian revolution brought the Baathist Party to power in 1966, supported by the Soviet Union. Many PLO attacks against Israel came from Syrian territory, with vocal Soviet encouragement for the Arab “progressive revolutionary” front.7 Terrorist attacks against Israel spiked in 1966 and 1967, and Israel often responded with disproportional force, which created hostile conditions that contributed to the outbreak of war in June 1967.
The Middle East did not figure prominently in Johnson’s foreign policy. He was a known “friend of Israel” from his days in the Congress, but the Vietnam War, beyond all other matters, dominated Johnson’s presidency. The former Senate majority leader from Texas preferred to focus on domestic issues, and particularly the Great Society, a New Deal–inspired program that aimed to eliminate poverty and promote civil rights. But advancements on the domestic front were undercut by the worsening war in East Asia. To make matters worse, the combination of a costly war with an overly ambitious domestic reform project, along with the end