1. The United States has played a major role in the militarization of the region.

2. The U.S. maintains an ongoing military presence in the Middle East.

3. There has been an enormous humanitarian toll resulting from U.S. policy toward Iraq.

4. The United States has not been a fair mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

5. U.S. support for Israel occupation forces has created enormous resentment throughout the Middle East.

The vast majority of Middle Eastern states and their people have belatedly acknowledged that Israel will continue to exist as part of the region as an independent Jewish state. However, there is enormous resentment at ongoing U.S. diplomatic, financial and military support for Israeli occupation forces and their policies.

The U.S. relationship with Israel is singular. Israel represents only one one-thousandth of the world’s population and has the 16th highest per capita income in the world, yet it receives nearly 40 percent of all U.S. foreign aid. Direct aid to Israel in recent years has exceeded $3.5 billion annually, with an additional $1 billion through other sources, and has been supported almost unanimously in Congress, even by liberal Democrats who normally insist on linking aid to human rights and international law. Although the American public appears to strongly support Israel’s right to exist and wants the U.S. to be a guarantor of that right, there is growing skepticism regarding the excessive level and unconditional nature of U.S. aid to Israel. Among elected officials, however, there are virtually no calls for a reduction of current aid levels in the foreseeable future, particularly as nearly all U.S. aid to Israel returns to the United States either via purchases of American armaments or as interest payments to U.S. banks for previous loans.

Despite closer American strategic cooperation with the Persian Gulf monarchies since the Gulf War, these governments clearly lack Israel's advantages in terms of political stability, a well-trained military, technological sophistication and the ability to quickly mobilize human and material resources.

Despite serious reservations about Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, most individual Americans have a longstanding moral commitment to Israel's survival. Official U.S. government policy supporting successive Israeli governments in recent years, however, appears to be crafted more from a recognition of how Israel supports American strategic interests in the Middle East and beyond. Indeed, 99 percent of all U.S. aid to Israel has been granted since the 1967 war, when Israel proved itself more powerful than any combination of its neighbors and occupied the territories of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and other Arabs. Many Israelis supportive of that country's peace movement believe the United States has repeatedly undermined their efforts to moderate their government's policies, arguing that Israeli security and Palestinian rights are not mutually-exclusive, as the U.S. seems to believe, but mutually dependent on the other.

As long as U.S. military, diplomatic and economic support of the Israeli government remains unconditional despite Israel's ongoing violation of human rights, international law and previous agreements with the Palestinians, there is no incentive for the Israeli government to change its policies. The growing Arab resentment that results can only threaten the long-term security interests of both Israel and the United States.

6. The United States has been inconsistent in its enforcement of international law and UN Security Council resolutions.

The U.S. has justified its strict sanctions and ongoing air strikes against Iraq on the grounds of enforcing United Nations Security Council resolutions. In addition, in recent years the United States has successfully pushed the UN Security Council to impose economic sanctions against Libya, Afghanistan and Sudan over extradition disputes, an unprecedented use of the UN’s authority. However, the U.S. has blocked sanctions against such Middle East allies as Turkey, Israel and Morocco for their ongoing occupation of neighboring countries, far more egregious violations of international law that directly counter the UN Charter. In recent years, for example, the U.S. has helped block the Security Council from moving forward with a UN-sponsored resolution on the fate of the Moroccan-occupied country of Western Sahara because of the likelihood that the people would vote for independence from Morocco, which invaded the former Spanish colony with U.S. backing in 1975.

Over the past 30 years, the U.S. has used its veto power to protect its ally Israel from censure more than all other members of the Security Council have used their veto power on all other issues combined. This past spring, for example, the U.S. vetoed an otherwise-unanimous resolution which would have dispatched unarmed human rights monitors to the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. In addition, the U.S. has launched a vigorous campaign to rescind all previous UN resolutions critical of Israel. Washington has labeled them "anachronistic," even though many of the issues addressed in these resolutions -- human rights violations, illegal settlements, expulsion of dissidents, development of nuclear weapons, the status of Jerusalem,and ongoing military occupation -- are still germane. The White House contends that the 1993 Oslo Accords render these earlier UN resolutions obsolete. However, such resolutions cannot be reversed without the approval of the UN body in question; the U.S. cannot unilaterally discount their relevance. Furthermore, no bilateral agreement (like Oslo) can supersede the authority of the UN Security Council, particularly if one of the two parties (the Palestinians) believe that these resolutions are still binding.

Most observers recognize that one of the major obstacles to Israeli-Palestinian peace is the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. However, the U.S. has blocked enforcement of UN Security Council resolutions calling for Israel to withdraw its settlements from Palestinian land. These settlements were established in violation of international law, which forbids the colonization of territories seized by military force. In addition, the U.S. has not opposed the expansion of existing settlements and has shown ambivalence regarding the large-scale construction of exclusively Jewish housing developments in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem. Furthermore, the U.S. has secured additional aid for Israel to construct highways connecting these settlements and to provide additional security, thereby reinforcing their permanence. This places the United States in direct violation of UN Security Council resolution 465, which "calls upon all states not to provide Israel with any assistance to be used specifically in connection with settlements in the occupied territories."

Look for #7 & #8 on Wednesday

Stephen Zunes is an associate professor of politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco. He serves as a senior policy analyst and Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus Project.