MISSED OPPORTUNITIES:

U.S. Diplomatic Failures and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947-1967

     Competing and frequently contradicting factors created American policy on the Arab-Israeli conflict between 1947 and 1967. Cold war concerns, issues of legality, the domestic importance of the American Jewish lobby, sympathy for Israel as a young founded in the aftermath of genocide, ambivalence toward the Palestinian population and Palestinian statehood, distate for certain Arab regimes, and the general pursuit of "right" all played their unique parts. Different issues were uppermost at critical junctures throughout the period.

     “In this meticulously researched, richly detailed, yet tightly focused monograph, Candace Karp argues that from 1947 to 1967 the United States missed numerous opportunities to promote a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. She concentrates on three issues—territory, refugees, and Jerusalem—and contends that in each case Washington failed to prevent Israel from imposing its will at the expense of Palestinian Arabs and neighboring Arab countries. That failure, inasmuch as it helped deepen and prolong the conflict, eroded America's standing in Arab opinion and damaged its strategic interests in the region….

      "Karp convincingly shows that the most consequential instances of U.S. inaction occurred during and immediately after the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948–1949 and 1967. In the first case, President Harry S. Truman allowed Israel to retain substantial territories in excess of its allotment in the 1947 United Nations partition plan, failed to convince Israel to repatriate hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, and accepted Israeli and Jordanian occupation of West and East Jerusalem, respectively, even though the partition plan had called for the internationalization of the city. In 1967, Lyndon B. Johnson's administration declined to push for an immediate Israeli withdrawal from newly captured Arab territory, dithered as a fresh wave of Palestinians fled their homes, and quietly resigned itself to Israel's indefinite occupation of East Jerusalem. In each instance, Karp argues, there was a crucial phase during which decisive U.S. action could have reversed the new territorial and demographic status quo. But Washington failed to exploit those opportunities, the postwar realities solidified, "and efforts to negotiate a settlement became infinitely more difficult" in the ensuing months and years (p. iii). The notable exception to this rule was President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who compelled a full Israeli withdrawal from Egyptian territory following the Suez war of 1956.”

 —Journal of American History (94:1)