From Truman's Recognition to Camp David, the US-Israel Alliance in Dates

Ask a certain kind of enthusiast and he will tell you the American alliance with Israel has been unbreakable since the day the state was born, a seventy-year love story with a single plot. Ask a certain kind of critic and he will tell you the same alliance was cooked up in a back room by lobbyists and has never had a justification beyond sentiment.

Both of them are telling you a bedtime story. The real record is messier and more interesting, and it contains presidents who pressured Israel hard, presidents who held back arms, and a fair amount of plain Cold War calculation. It also contains a few moments when the relationship deepened sharply, and you can date them. So let's do that, with a line on why each date mattered. When you have the dates, you have the facts, and you can leave the bedtime stories to the cable channels.

How to read this

Three notes before the entries.

• The alliance is not a treaty. The United States has no mutual defense treaty with Israel. What exists is a layered set of understandings, laws, arms agreements, and habits, built over decades. That is one reason the relationship has changed with administrations.
• Both parties built it. Democrats and Republicans have each pressured Israel and each defended it. If someone tells you only one party has ever stood with Israel, they are selling something.
• A date proves a fact, not a policy. For my take on the policy arguments, see Eleven Hard Questions About Israel and American Interests, Answered. This post is just the calendar.

The founding years, 1948 to 1956

May 14, 1948: recognition. David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the State of Israel in Tel Aviv on the day the British Mandate ended. President Harry Truman extended American recognition within minutes of the announcement, making the United States the first country to do so, although Washington recognized the new government on a de facto basis, with formal recognition coming in January 1949. Truman did it over the objection of his own Secretary of State, George Marshall, a man Truman admired enormously. Marshall feared the move would damage American relations with the Arab world and hand the Soviets an opening. Truman's decision was driven by a mix of conscience about the Holocaust, domestic politics, and his own reading of the situation.

Why it mattered: it set the precedent that the United States would treat Israel as a legitimate state with a right to exist, a decision the first administration made while its own diplomats were worried.

Early 1950s: no arms. Here the enthusiast's story hits a wall. In its early years Israel did not get its main weapons from Washington. The United States maintained an arms embargo on the region. France became Israel's principal arms supplier through the 1950s and into the 1960s. If you want a reminder that this is not a story of automatic support, note who actually sold the planes.

October 29 to November 1956: Suez. Israel invaded the Sinai in coordination with Britain and France, who were angry at Egypt's nationalization of the Suez Canal. Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, was furious. He had not been told, and he opposed the operation. The United States joined the Soviet Union in the United Nations in demanding withdrawal, and Eisenhower applied financial and diplomatic pressure. Israel left the Sinai by March 1957.

Why it mattered: it showed that a Republican president with a strong commitment to the Western alliance would still lean on Israel when he thought its actions cut against American interests. If your idea of the alliance is a blank check, Suez is the first rebuttal. It is also a reminder that Eisenhower did not decline to use leverage.

The turn, 1967 to 1973

June 5 to 10, 1967: the Six-Day War. After Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran and massed forces in the Sinai, Israel launched a preemptive strike and defeated Egypt, Jordan, and Syria in six days. It took the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. On June 8 Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats attacked the American intelligence ship USS Liberty in international waters, killing 34 Americans. Israel apologized and called it a case of mistaken identity. Americans have argued about it ever since. I mention it because a fair timeline includes the ugly episodes along with the triumphs.

In November 1967 the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 242, which called for Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied in the war in exchange for peace and recognized every state's right to live in security. The wording has been argued over since, because the English text speaks of withdrawal "from territories," without the word "the." Lawyers have built careers on that missing word.

Why it mattered: the war changed Israel's strategic position, made it a bigger factor in Cold War planning, and shifted the American relationship. The sale of American Phantom jets began under President Johnson, in the years following, and the United States started to replace France as Israel's main arms source.

October 6, 1973: the Yom Kippur War. Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Israel was initially pushed back and then recovered. The Soviet Union was resupplying its Arab clients, and the conflict became a proxy fight between the superpowers.

October 1973: Operation Nickel Grass. After days of internal delay, President Nixon ordered a massive American airlift of military supplies to Israel, which began in mid-October. Nixon also asked Congress for an emergency aid package, and I leave you to check the exact amount on Congress.gov. The airlift ran into November.

The price came fast. Arab oil producers imposed an embargo on the United States, and gas lines and higher prices followed. That is the part left out of the "free ride" story. The oil embargo was a direct cost to American families, and the decision to resupply Israel was made knowing that cost might land.

Why it mattered: Nickel Grass was the moment American support became operational and visible on a large scale. It also showed the connection between the alliance and the energy markets, a lesson relevant to anyone who has ever filled a gas tank.

The pressure and the peace, 1975 to 1979

1975: the "reassessment." Gerald Ford, another Republican, grew frustrated when Israel balked at a further disengagement agreement with Egypt in the Sinai. In March 1975 he announced a "reassessment" of American policy and slowed arms deliveries. A Sinai interim agreement followed that autumn, with American guarantees attached.

Why it mattered: it is the second Republican president on this list who pressured Israel in the open. These were not anti-Israel presidents. They were presidents who believed the alliance gave them standing to argue.

September 5 to 17, 1978: Camp David. President Jimmy Carter hosted Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at the presidential retreat in Maryland for nearly two weeks. They produced two framework agreements, signed at the White House on September 17: one on the Egypt-Israel peace and one on a broader framework for the Palestinian question. Sadat and Begin shared the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize.

March 26, 1979: the Egypt-Israel peace treaty. Signed on the White House lawn. Israel agreed to withdraw from the Sinai in stages, and Egypt recognized Israel and established normal relations. The agreement came with American commitments of money, military assistance, and monitoring, to both countries, and it started the pattern of large American aid packages to Egypt and Israel that persisted for decades.

Why it mattered: it took the largest Arab army out of the circle of Israel's enemies, and it showed that Arab-Israeli peace could be negotiated by Americans. Sadat paid for it with his life: he was assassinated in October 1981. And this treaty is the template that the 2020 normalization deals followed, a point I take up in How the Abraham Accords Broke the Old Formula for Middle East Peace.

The Reagan and Bush years, 1981 to 1992

June 7, 1981: Osirak. Israeli aircraft destroyed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor. The Reagan administration condemned the raid at the United Nations and temporarily held up delivery of F-16 aircraft. The strike later looked prescient, as Iraq's weapons ambitions became clear.

November 1981: strategic cooperation. Reagan's administration signed a memorandum of understanding on strategic cooperation with Israel, which was suspended by Washington after Israel extended its law to the Golan Heights in December 1981. In 1983, a new arrangement set up a joint political-military group.

April 1985: free trade. Israel and the United States signed a free-trade agreement, the first the United States had signed with any country.

Why these mattered: the 1980s were the decade the alliance grew into institutions, trade, intelligence, and military planning. And even then, it was not a one-way street. Reagan held back weapons and criticized Israel's operations in Lebanon in 1982.

1991: loan guarantees. After the Gulf War, in which Israel absorbed Iraqi missile attacks and held its fire at American request, a dispute broke out between President George H. W. Bush and the Israeli government over settlement construction. Bush asked Congress to delay action on Israel's request for $10 billion in loan guarantees to help resettle Soviet Jewish immigrants. That is the third Republican White House on the list to use leverage. The guarantees were eventually granted on conditions, after an election changed the Israeli government in 1992.

Why it mattered: it is further proof that the alliance has always been negotiated, not assumed.

Oslo and the peace-process years, 1991 to 1994

October 30, 1991: Madrid. The Bush administration, with the Soviet Union still on the map, convened a conference in Madrid that put Israeli and Arab delegations in the same room for the first time in a formal multilateral setting. It produced no treaty. It produced a format, and formats matter in diplomacy, because a country that has sat across the table once finds it easier to do so again.

September 13, 1993: the Oslo Accords. Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed a Declaration of Principles on the White House lawn, with President Clinton watching Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shake hands. The agreement set up a framework for Palestinian self-government and left the hardest questions, including borders, Jerusalem, and refugees, for later negotiation. Those questions are still the hardest ones, which tells you something about how much "later" can stretch.

October 26, 1994: Israel and Jordan. The two countries signed a peace treaty, with Clinton present as a witness. Jordan became the second Arab state to make peace with Israel.

Why these mattered: the early 1990s taught Washington a habit it has never quite shaken, which is to treat itself as the necessary host of every Arab-Israeli negotiation. The habit has produced real treaties and real disappointments, and a skeptic can fairly ask whether the American role as broker was ever compatible with the American role as ally. The honest answer is that it was sometimes both and sometimes neither. The broker's job is to push both sides, and the ally's job is to stand by one. You can see the tension in every entry on this list.

The embassy law, 1995

October and November 1995: the Jerusalem Embassy Act. Congress passed a bill in late October 1995, and it became law that November, declaring that Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of Israel and that the American embassy should move there, with a target date of May 31, 1999. The act came with a waiver. A president could postpone the move for six months at a time on national security grounds, and presidents of both parties signed those waivers, one after another, for more than twenty years. President Clinton let the bill become law without his signature.

Why it mattered: it is the best single illustration of a quiet constitutional point. Congress wrote the policy and the executive branch controlled the timetable. The embassy moved in May 2018, and I mention that only as a fact of the calendar. The long gap between the law and the move tells you how seriously every administration treated the sensitivity of the issue, and how much room the waiver gave them.

Reading the pattern

What does the timeline show?

1. Support deepened in steps, not in one stroke. Recognition in 1948. Arms after 1967. The airlift in 1973. Treaty money after 1979. Institutions in the 1980s.
2. Pressure from Washington is part of the history. Eisenhower in 1956, Ford in 1975, Reagan in 1981 and 1982, Bush in 1991. Every one of them was a Republican, which should make you suspicious of anyone who says the alliance means never saying no.
3. Cold War logic and shared values did the work together. The Soviet Union looms behind a good deal of this calendar. So do democracy, a free press, and common enemies.
4. Congress has been a driver. The 1995 law is one example. The aid packages are another. Whatever you think of them, they are products of legislative votes.

That last point is a reminder to read the record yourself on Congress.gov rather than taking a pundit's word. For the larger frame on how the alliance fits with the rest of American foreign policy, see Vandenberg's Conversion and the Republicans Who Built the Postwar Order and Did Reagan Really Win the Cold War or Did the Soviets Just Collapse.

The bottom line

• The alliance was built in stages across seven decades and both parties. It was never automatic, and it was never one thing.
• Republican presidents pressured Israel when they thought American interests required it. That is the proof the relationship is a partnership, not a trance.
• Dates beat slogans. Next time someone lectures you about "the special relationship," ask them what happened in 1956, 1975, or 1991.
• Read the primary documents. The text of the Camp David Accords and the Jerusalem Embassy Act is a few clicks away, and it will tell you more than a pundit's summary.
• When you evaluate a policy proposal, ask whether it strengthens an arrangement that has served American interests, and what it costs. That's the right question, and it's one you can ask without insulting anyone.