Divided at Home: How Israelis Saw the Iraq War
The idea that Israel pushed America into Iraq was popular on both the left and the right. The record at home was messier: Israeli opinion was split, and the government's calculations were more cautious than the neoconservative project.
Few claims about the 2003 invasion of Iraq have been as persistent as the idea that it was a war fought for Israel. Critics on the left and right alike argued that pro-Israel voices in Washington had steered the United States into toppling Saddam Hussein. The view from Israel itself was considerably more complicated.
A divided public
Polling and press commentary in Israel at the time showed a public that was far from unanimous. Many Israelis were glad to see the end of a dictator who had fired Scud missiles at Tel Aviv in 1991 and paid bounties to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Many others worried that a war would destabilise the region, strengthen Iran and bring few benefits for Israel. Some polls suggested the public was roughly evenly split on the war.
The Israeli security establishment had long regarded Iran, not Iraq, as the more serious strategic threat. Iraq had been weakened by the 1991 war and a decade of sanctions. Some Israeli analysts warned that removing Saddam would take away the main counterweight to Tehran, and that is largely what happened.
Sharon's calculation
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon backed the Bush administration publicly, as Israeli leaders almost always do when Washington goes to war. His support was pragmatic rather than ideological. The neoconservative vision of spreading democracy across the Arab world through American power held little appeal for a man who preferred to deal with Arab governments bluntly and on the basis of deterrence.
For Sharon, the war's main value was in keeping the US engaged and aligned with Israel. It also kept attention away from pressure over the Palestinian territories, where the second intifada was still raging.
The democratisation gamble
The democratisation agenda that followed the invasion was received coolly in much of the Israeli establishment. When the Bush administration pressed for elections in the Palestinian territories, the result in January 2006 was a victory for Hamas. Many Israeli officials read that as confirmation of their scepticism.
Why it matters now
The debate over Israel's role in the Iraq war is not only historical. The same arguments recur whenever a new confrontation looms, particularly with Iran. There are two recurring mistakes. One treats Israel as the hidden author of American policy. The other assumes that Israeli opinion is monolithic.
The Iraq war showed a more ordinary reality. Israelis argued about it among themselves, their government hedged, and the war's consequences, above all the rise of Iranian influence, fell heavily on the country that supposedly wanted it most.