How to Ensure the Future of the U.S.–Israel Relationship

The title of Charles Freilich’s essay in Mosaic, “Has Israel Grown Too Dependent on the United States?,” raises a very important question to which Freilich offers a number of answers and recommendations. Before considering his overall approach, I would like to take exception to three separate points he makes in passing.

First: Freilich claims that in 2005, “it was the American position that led to [Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon’s decision to withdraw from Gaza in its entirety, to dismantle all of the Israeli settlements there, and [also]to remove four settlements in the West Bank.” He’s not alone in this claim; it has been widely argued that Washington bent Sharon’s arm to force him to move out of Gaza. But the claim is false. I was closely involved in these matters while working in the George W. Bush White House, and I believe Freilich is correct only as to the last point: the removal of the four settlements in the West Bank.

As for the major decision—namely, to withdraw and remove Israeli settlements from Gaza—that was not the result of White House pressure. It was Sharon’s own decision, and it came as a surprise to us. We did counsel him to cut cleanly if he was cutting at all, on the ground that half-measures would reap neither political nor military benefit; he and many other Israeli generals agreed. And we also urged him to make some simultaneous move, however small, in the West Bank. The four removed settlements were, in fact, tiny.