US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hold a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House on Monday, Nov. 9.SAUL LOEB/AFP / Getty Images
Israel's coalition government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has become the most hawkish administration ever in that country with the addition this week of another pro-settlement party led by Avigdor Lieberman, now Israel's defence minister.
Washington already has criticized the nature of the new government, but Israel's supporters dismiss such reproach saying that U.S. President Barack Obama has been the most hostile president toward Israel since 1948 when the state was founded. They suggest that the next U.S. president – whether Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump – will be a lot friendlier.
But is that likely? History shows that of the 12 U.S. presidents to have dealt with Israel since its creation in 1948, at least half of them have shown considerable hostility toward Israeli governments or their prime ministers, some more pronounced than any exhibited by Barack Obama.
Dwight Eisenhower (president from 1953 to 1961) was the most deliberate in distancing the United States from Israel, says Dennis Ross, a long-time presidential adviser on the Middle East and author of Doomed to Succeed: The U.S.-Israel Relationship from Truman to Obama (2015).
Mr. Eisenhower chose to side with Arab states when he suspended loans to Israel that had been granted by his predecessor, Harry Truman. The young Jewish state had wanted to develop hydroelectric power by damming the Jordan River, only part of which it controlled, and Jordan and its Arab allies complained. This suspension of support, Mr. Ross notes, came at a time when "Israel's neighbours rejected Israel's existence and were permitting fedayeen [militants] to carry out terrorist raids into Israel."
In contrast, for all his differences with Mr. Netanyahu, President Obama has agreed to increase the amount of aid given each year to Israel – even if it's not as big an increase as the Israeli leader would like.
Israel's 1956 invasion of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and its capture of the Suez Canal (in collusion with Britain and France) infuriated President Eisenhower and he threatened to impose sanctions on Israel if it did not withdraw from Egypt.
For all his time in office, Mr. Eisenhower adhered to a 1948 embargo against Israel and refused to allow the sale of any significant U.S. weapons to the Jewish state.
George H.W. Bush (1989-1993) was another U.S. leader with strong reservations about Israeli policies and a strong dislike of that country's gruff prime minister. "The only leader in the world who George H.W. Bush dealt with but did not like was Yitzhak Shamir," wrote Mr. Ross, who believed that "Shamir had misled him in their very first meeting after Bush became president."
Relations with Israel hit a new low when Mr. Bush refused Israel $10-billion (U.S.) in loan guarantees unless Israel froze all new settlement construction in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Even Mr. Obama has not gone that far to stop the growth of settlements.
Like Mr. Eisenhower, who was followed by a more Israeli-friendly president – John F. Kennedy – Mr. Bush was succeeded by a U.S. leader who enjoyed a close rapport with Israel's leadership, at least some of the time.
Bill Clinton (1993-2001) dealt with three Israeli prime ministers. "His relationship with Yitzhak Rabin was the gold standard," wrote Mr. Ross who served as Middle East co-ordinator during the Clinton administration. "There was great mutual respect and an inherent sense that the other could always be counted on when needed."
It was Mr. Clinton who hosted on the White House lawn the signing ceremony of the ground-breaking Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
However, Mr. Rabin's assassination in 1995 would cut short that relationship.
Mr. Clinton is reported to have gotten along reasonably well with Mr. Rabin's immediate successor, Shimon Peres, who shared the same interest in a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But Benjamin Netanyahu, who defeated Mr. Peres in the prime ministerial election of 1996 was another matter. He irked Mr. Clinton from the day he took office.
Not only was Mr. Netanyahu part of the anti-Rabin movement that inspired extremists who carried out Mr. Rabin's assassination, but Mr. Netanyahu came to power promising to kill the Oslo Accords, one of Mr. Clinton's proudest realizations.
The President came to dislike Mr. Netanyahu so much that he dispatched to Israel members of his own campaign team, including pollster Stanley Greenberg and strategist James Carville, to help Labour leader Ehud Barak defeat Mr. Netanyahu in the 1999 election.
Hillary Clinton's attitude toward Israel most closely resembles that of her husband, Mr. Clinton. What isn't clear is whether she harbours similar disdain toward Mr. Netanyahu.
Lyndon Johnson (1963-1969) was one of the presidents who did a great deal for Israel. Whereas his predecessor, Mr. Kennedy, had bent the rules of the arms embargo and allowed the sale to Israel of "defensive" U.S. weapons such as Hawk anti-aircraft missiles, President Johnson broke the embargo completely.
He authorized the sale of hundreds of tanks to Israel in 1965 (balancing that with similar tank sales to Jordan). Then, in 1968, in the wake of the Six-Day War, Mr. Johnson abandoned the principle of keeping a military balance when he sold Phantom jet fighters to Israel and established a new principle – helping Israel maintain military superiority over its Arab neighbours. That standard has continued to this day.
George W. Bush (2001-2009) was the other great friend of Israel. Very different from his father, Mr. Bush was close to both prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert.
That warmth has been attributed to a helicopter ride then-governor Bush took over Israel in 1998. His guide was Mr. Sharon, then Israeli foreign minister, and Mr. Bush was struck by how small and vulnerable Israel seemed.
"We have driveways in Texas longer than that," he is reported to have said of the length of the Jewish state.
After the United States was attacked in September, 2001, "he [Mr. Bush] understood how it was for Israel to be attacked," said Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary.
Mr. Bush promoted the idea of a two-state solution and helped devise a "road map" that was supposed to bring about such an outcome. But, from the beginning, Mr. Bush made it clear he supported Israel first and foremost, especially when it came to what he viewed as Palestinian terrorist organizations. He refused even to meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
The kind of trusting relationships between leaders such as Mr. Bush and Mr. Sharon or Mr. Clinton and Mr. Rabin have "more often than not … been the exception rather than the rule," says Mr. Ross.
Even some of those who seemed most helpful to Israel at one point, have ended up critics of Israel over the long run.
Harry Truman (1945-1953), for example, got enormous credit for overriding the objections of all his advisers and cabinet members and recognizing the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. But afterward, he did nothing to end the arms embargo against the struggling state he had recognized.
Ronald Reagan (1981-1989), as well, began his term seeking to establish closer ties with Israel, which he viewed as a strategic U.S. ally.
He formalized strategic co-operation between the two states, "creating a web of ties between the Pentagon and IDF [Israeli Defence Forces] and a progressive strengthening of Israel's military capability," wrote Mitchell Bard, director of the Jewish Virtual Library, an online encyclopedia on Jewish and Israeli matters.
But, at the same time, Mr. Reagan – despite Israeli objections – sold sophisticated radar planes to Saudi Arabia, condemned the Menachem Begin government for bombing the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak, and suspended the strategic co-operation agreement when Israel purported to have annexed the occupied Golan Heights of Syria.
"The President did not hide his distaste for the Israeli leader," concluded Mr. Bard. Mr. Begin, in return, "accused Reagan of treating Israel like a 'banana republic.'"
Should Donald Trump as president behave as did Ronald Reagan – the man he is said to resemble politically – and should Mr. Netanyahu remain in power in Israel, supporters of the Jewish state may long for Mr. Obama.