Why the US can but won’t stop Israel

Twenty-eight countries, including many hitherto reluctant to do so, have demanded an immediate end to Israel’s war in Gaza. Several, including France, the UK, Canada and now Australia, have moved to recognise the Palestinian state. Israel’s isolation among its traditional allies is deepening. Yet the United States, the only country with the power to stop the war, remains unflinching in its support. Under President Donald Trump, that support is unabashed, extending even to Israel’s proposed takeover of Gaza city.

But when it comes to Israel, Trump is not an outlier among US heads of state. Not in substantive terms. The truth is that no US president, Democrat or Republican, has been willing to use America’s enormous leverage to rein in Israel.

It goes back a long way. Harry Truman recognised the State of Israel within minutes of its declaration in 1948. It was a decision shaped by Holocaust memory, Cold War geopolitics and domestic political calculations. The US–Israel compact has been fortified by an intricate web of military cooperation, cultural identification and economic integration.

It has survived wars, occupations and repeated humanitarian crises, not because Washington is blind to Israel’s excesses, but because the costs of confrontation are deemed too high by the American political leadership.

The US–Israel partnership is quite unique. Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of US foreign aid, much of it military. The current ten-year agreement, signed by Barack Obama, guarantees $3.8 billion a year in US security assistance.

That money largely circles back to the US defence sector, creating tens of thousands of jobs. Joint projects like the Iron Dome missile defence system show how intricately intertwined the American and Israeli defence industries are.

Israel’s intelligence services feed US counterterrorism operations; its air force can strike Iranian weapons convoys or proxies without putting American troops in harm’s way. In the Pentagon’s eyes, Israel is a cost-effective strategic asset, one that projects American power in the Middle East without the political baggage of direct intervention.

These strategic benefits are reinforced by domestic political realities. The pro-Israel lobby, anchored by AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), remains one of the most influential forces in Washington. It commands bipartisan loyalty, mobilises a nationwide network of donors and lobbyists, and ensures that congressional majorities routinely approve aid packages for Israel and block measures critical of it.

The Evangelical Christians, who comprise nearly a fourth of the population and a core Republican voting bloc, see Israel’s survival as a biblical imperative. Wealthy donors funnel vast sums into election campaigns. The risks for politicians who challenge the consensus are stark: loss of funding, primary challenges and accusations of antisemitism.

Democratic presidents have been just as bound by these constraints. Obama’s clashes with Benjamin Netanyahu over settlements did not stop record levels of military aid. Joe Biden, while warning about civilian casualties in Gaza, approved $18 billion in weapons transfers after the October 2023 Hamas attack. His rhetoric about exercising restraint was never accompanied with anything substantial — arms embargos or attaching conditions to aid — that could have altered Israel’s calculus.

Trump has simply removed the veil of doublespeak, openly backing maximalist aims, from annexing Gaza city to sidelining the Palestinian Authority altogether.

But public opinion, especially among Democrats, is shifting. Polls now show more Democrats sympathising with Palestinians than with Israelis, a historic reversal. Young Americans, including younger Jews, are far less reflexively pro-Israel than their parents. Yet, among Republicans, support remains robust, driven by evangelical fervour and conservative identification with Israel’s nationalist right.

The political map ensures that even Democrats tread cautiously: swing states like Pennsylvania and Michigan have Arab American communities who are angry with US policy, but the party leadership fears alienating donors and centrist voters still leaning towards Israel.

The alliance is also sustained by the fiction popular in Washington of Israel being ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’, purportedly a partner of the US in defending liberty and the ‘rule of law’. That framing somehow endures even as Netanyahu solidifies the military occupation of Palestinian territories and continues to preside over a genocide while the US continues to support it both militarily and diplomatically.

To many US lawmakers, defending Israel is presented not just as a strategic necessity but as a moral obligation, making it politically hazardous to draw lines, even in the face of serious war crimes.

History shows how durable this pattern is. In 1982, after Israeli-allied militias massacred hundreds of Palestinians in Beirut’s Sabra and Shatila camps, Ronald Reagan briefly paused arms shipments, only to resume them weeks later. During the Second Intifada, George W. Bush embraced Ariel Sharon’s offensives as part of the ‘war on terror’.

Today, the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023 have been used to justify an open-ended Gaza war that has killed over 60,000 Palestinians, displaced 90 per cent of the population and pushed the enclave to a humanitarian catastrophe. In Washington, after all this, you may occasionally hear words of mild disapproval but never a mention of withdrawing aid or support.

The silence has a compelling economic logic: as mentioned earlier, US aid to Israel doubles as support for American defence contractors. Israeli purchases of US-made weapons keep assembly lines running and congressional districts employed. The same applies to high-tech cooperation: joint R&D in cybersecurity, AI and aerospace yields commercial as well as military dividends.

Under the present US administration, the alignment is also ideological. Netanyahu’s coalition of religious nationalists and ultraconservatives mirrors the culture-war politics of the MAGA base: hostility to liberal internationalism, disdain for the UN and admiration for strongman governance.

Supporting Netanyahu’s Gaza policy, even against the objections of allies like the UK and France, becomes an assertion of nationalist defiance as much as an independent foreign policy.

Can Washington stop Israel’s war? Absolutely. Without US weapons, funding and diplomatic protection, especially at the UN, Israel’s capacity to sustain the campaign would collapse. A credible threat to suspend aid or weapons transfers could force a ceasefire within days.

But taking that step would require a leadership willing to defy AIPAC, evangelical voters, defence industry giants and the strategic doctrine that has treated Israel as an indispensable proxy for 77 years. No occupant of the Oval Office has been prepared to pay that political price.

This is why America can stop Israel but won’t. It chooses not to. The war in Gaza may yet end, whether through exhaustion, diplomatic pressure from other quarters or shifts within Israel itself. But if it does, it will not be because Washington decided to force the issue.

Ashok Swain is a professor of peace and conflict research at Uppsala University, Sweden. More of his writing may be read here