Stop Giving the Arsonist More Fuel

Signaling strong support for Israel while it is sowing chaos is a good way to ensnare the U.S. in a war and get Americans killed.

Richard Haass gets another big foreign policy question wrong:

There is also something the US should resist doing. There will be those arguing that Washington should cut off arms to Israel. To be sure, there was a strong case for denying selective munitions that cause widespread civilian casualties in Gaza. One could also argue for political and economic sanctions relating to Israeli settlement activity. And there is more than a little reason to be frustrated with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who did not alert the US before Haniyeh’s assassination despite his centrality to the effort to negotiate a ceasefire and hostage return.

But the focus has now shifted away from Gaza (where military operations have wound down from their winter peak) and towards reducing the chance of major new fronts opening between Israel and Hizbollah or Israel and Iran. In this changed context, it is critical that Iran understands that US backing for Israel is strong and that armed escalation on its part, or that of its proxies, will not achieve the desired ends.

The U.S. is obligated by its own laws to suspend arms transfers to a government that restricts and blocks the delivery of humanitarian aid, and it is also required to cut off military aid to governments that engage in gross violations of human rights. These cutoffs are not supposed to be optional, but when it comes to Israel there is always some excuse for not following the law. There is no doubt that the Israeli government has run afoul of these provisions in U.S. law, but the standard foreign policy establishment view as expressed by Haass is that the weapons must flow anyway.