Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem Oct. 7.© POOL New / Reuters
Relations between Israel and the United States reached a precarious low this week, just as political tensions in Jerusalem have reached dangerous highs.
The breakdown has been a long time coming. The administration of President Barack Obama views the government of Benjamin Netanyahu as constantly undermining efforts at peacemaking by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. With every Israeli announcement of new Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank, including in the annexed Arab eastern Jerusalem, more and more U.S. officials begin to doubt the sincerity of Mr. Netanyahu's pledge to work toward a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
This week, in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of Atlantic Magazine, a "senior Obama administration official" is quoted describing the Israeli leader in unflattering terms. "The thing about Bibi," the person said, referring to Mr. Netanyahu by his nickname, "is he's a chickenshit."
Mr. Goldberg, a writer sensitive to Israeli interests, but well plugged-in at the White House, said he doesn't remember "such a period of sustained and mutual contempt" between the two countries national leaders. And he insists he had not previously heard Mr. Netanyahu described this way.
If so, then he wasn't listening.
In his book The Missing Peace, Dennis Ross, co-ordinator of the peace process in the Bill Clinton administration quoted President Clinton yelling at Mr. Netanyahu when he reneged on a pledge to release Palestinian prisoners. "This is just chickenshit," he reportedly said. "I'm not going to put up with this kind of bullshit."
Sometimes it's been put a different way. Aaron David Miller, another Clinton official and now at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, referred in his book, The Much Too Promised Land, to Mr. Clinton's outrage over being lectured by Mr. Netanyahu in their first meeting back in 1996. "Who the fuck does he think he is?" an exasperated president is said to have asked his staff. "Who's the fucking superpower here?"
And such venom has not been reserved for Mr. Netanyahu, nor has it come only from Democratic administrations.
In 1982, Ronald Reagan's administration was greatly upset by Israel's immediate rejection of a far-reaching Reagan initiative to broker a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as an end to the Lebanese civil war.
And, in 1975, U.S. president Gerald Ford, along with his secretary of state Henry Kissinger, was so disturbed by Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin's refusal to pull back from the Egyptian Sinai, captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, that he froze the delivery of U.S. arms to Israel.
Perhaps the lowest point ever reached between the two countries was in the middle of that 1967 war, when Israeli forces attacked a U.S. naval vessel in international waters in the Mediterranean off the coast of Sinai. The assault killed 34 Americans, wounded 171 and almost sank the ship. The vessel, USS Liberty, had been on a spy mission, tracking developments in the war, and many believe the attack was deliberate.
Israel quickly apologized for the action, saying it had been a terrible mistake in identifying the ship. Both countries agreed to cover over the incident. Israel paid compensation to the wounded and the families of the dead, and Washington said little about it. U.S. inquiries exonerated Israel of blame.
President Lyndon Johnson, however, was reportedly furious about the incident and let at least one journalist, at Newsweek magazine, know about it.
While these periods of great anger between the two allies have ebbed and flowed over the years, U.S. support for Israel has been resolute.
Now however, the parties may be heading for a perfect storm.
Next year, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas may seek full recognition by the United Nations Security Council of a Palestinian state. Already several countries have embraced the notion, including most recently Sweden. The British parliament, in a non-binding resolution, also overwhelmingly endorsed the idea. International public support for Israel, especially in the wake of its war against Hamas in Gaza this past summer, has been slipping badly – even in the United States.
If the matter comes to a vote at the Security Council, Palestinians believe they will have a majority. The only thing preventing passage would be a veto by one of the five permanent members. Until now, the United States could always be counted on to provide that veto. But a frustrated and angry White House might just abstain from casting such a vote. Or, as Mr. Goldberg suggests, might just fashion a stridently anti-settlement resolution in its place.
Israelis may be thinking that the possible election next week of a Republican majority in the U.S. Senate, as well as the House of Representatives, will safeguard Israeli interests. But it is the president who sets U.S. foreign policy and tells the ambassador to the United Nations how to vote.
Events, however, might not wait for next year.
In Jerusalem this week, tensions over access and control of the top of Mount Moriah, inside the Old City, boiled over. The plateau, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, where King Solomon's original temple was built, and to Muslims as Haram as-Sharif or Noble Sanctuary, from where Prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven in a dream, is claimed both by Israelis and Palestinians.
This normally serene, inspiring place is where Jews, Muslims and Christians believe the prophet Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son to prove his faith in god; it's the location of the temple, Christians believe, from which Jesus chased the money-changers. It's the site of Sunni Muslims' beautiful Dome of the Rock and historic al-Aqsa mosque, both built in the seventh century. On its western side sits the Herodian wall known to Jews as the holy Western Wall.
To its credit, Israel, immediately after capturing the Old City from Jordanian forces in 1967, returned control of the mount to the Islamic Waqf and Jordanian religious authorities. The action was encouraged by Jewish authorities who noted that the plateau was the site of the Holy of Holies, the place where the Ark of the Covenant had been kept, and upon which no Jew, except the high Jewish priest should step.
A small but growing group of Israeli activists, however, has increasingly demanded the restoration of Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount; many insist a new Jewish temple must be built on the site of the Dome of the Rock.
On Wednesday night, one of these activists was seriously shot in an apparent assassination attempt. The suspected perpetrator was chased down and shot dead in an ostensible firefight.
Mr. Netanyahu blames Mr. Abbas for inciting Palestinians when he recently said they should safeguard the Haram as-Sharif "at any cost."
But Mr. Netanyahu has increasingly tolerated the provocative agenda of right-wing activists – the kind of things that also has disturbed the Obama administration.
In this climate, a third intifada is not out of the question.