Andrew Miller urges the U.S. to cease its unconditional support for Israel in order to have a more balanced and “normal” relationship:
Decades of unconditional U.S. support for Israel have undermined, rather than advanced, peace and stability in the Middle East. The Palestinians have been the primary victims of these failures, but the United States and Israel have also paid a cost. And until the core problem with the bilateral relationship is fixed, that price will only grow. The United States and Israel will need to adapt if their relationship is to survive, transitioning from exceptional but self-destructive cooperation to a more normal relationship that can still form the basis of an alliance.
Miller is right to want the U.S.-Israel relationship to change. What he calls the “exceptional relationship” has been a bad arrangement for all concerned. There is no question that “unconditional U.S. support has enabled the worst instincts of Israeli leaders.” The war and genocide in Gaza have been extreme examples of what that looks like in practice. Any client state given such free rein by its patron will tend to behave as destructively and recklessly as it wants, and in Israel’s case the client has been off the reins entirely for decades.
The new relationship that Miller has in mind seems reasonable enough, but his proposed changes are inadequate. Before Gaza it might have made sense to change the “exceptional” relationship to a normal one, but in light of what U.S. support has enabled and the crimes that the U.S. has aided and abetted the change in the relationship must be more than that. The U.S. doesn’t have a proper alliance with Israel, and it shouldn’t want to have one.