Our Wednesday News Analysis | Can US break the stranglehold of Israel alliance?

Two major stories this month represent watershed moments in the history of the relationship between the US and Israel. (AFP)

This defiance of old taboos is not confined to progressive factions.
In an unprecedented development on July 15, US Vice President J.D. Vance delivered some of
the sharpest criticism of Israel ever uttered by a sitting top-tier US official.

Two major stories about the US and Israel this month represent watershed moments in the history of their relationship.

The first incident occurred on July 8, when Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna and his delegation were detained by armed Israeli settlers in the West Bank.

“These hoodlums come in with machine guns — an M4, an American-made machine gun — and they detain us,” Khanna recounted. “They block off the road. And then they call the IDF, and the IDF is on their side, not on the side of the Americans,” he added, referring to the Israeli military.

Equally shocking as the congressman’s direct encounter with the raw, lawless reality of the occupation was the response of US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee. Rather than defending an elected American lawmaker, Huckabee dismissed Khanna’s harrowing experience as a mere “stunt.”

This defiance of old taboos is not confined to progressive factions. In an unprecedented development on July 15, US Vice President J.D. Vance delivered some of the sharpest criticism of Israel ever uttered by a sitting top-tier US official.

Addressing a reported Israeli government-funded online influence campaign aimed at sabotaging the US administration’s diplomatic efforts with Iran, a furious Vance accused “certain elements of the Israeli government” of actively trying to derail peace negotiations and manipulate American public opinion. He went so far as to target the operators of the campaign, telling them directly to “go to hell.”

Yet, even as fierce criticism of Israel reaches the apex of American politics, a schizophrenic rupture divides Washington. While the American public, influential media personalities and top-tier politicians are openly turning against Israel’s unbridled violence, the traditional power structures continue to toe the line.

This is evident in Congress, where establishment politicians remain busy acting as defense contractors for Tel Aviv. Lawmakers are quietly pushing ahead with Section 219 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2027. Far from distancing the US from the ongoing regional bloodbath, this legislation aims to permanently integrate and synchronize the US and Israeli militaries under a joint “Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative.”

This institutional blind spot is why the entire alliance is beginning to look utterly ridiculous...

Read more: Can US break the stranglehold of Israel alliance?

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OPINION: WHILE THE WORLD IS WATCHING, THE MAP OF PALESTINE IS BEING REDRAWN

Source: Global Bar Magazine
https://globalbar.se/2026/07/opinion-while-the-world-is-watching-the-map-of-palestine-is-being-redrawn/

By Jad Isaac
Published July 20, 2026

Three decades of geospatial research reveal how settlement expansion, land confiscation and administrative restructuring are transforming the occupied Palestinian territory faster than diplomacy can respond, writes Jad Isaac, Director General, Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem (ARIJ).

The Wall near Jerusalem. Photo: Shutterstock.

Researchers cannot negotiate peace, nor can they determine political outcomes.
Our responsibility is different. It is to ensure that decision-makers, journalists, and citizens
cannot later claim they did not know what was happening while it was happening.

For more than three decades, the international community has repeated the same political slogan: the two-state solution remains the only viable path to peace.

Yet while diplomats have continued to issue statements and reaffirm commitments, the on-the-ground geography has changed far more rapidly than the diplomacy meant to protect it.

This is not simply another cycle of conflict. It is the systematic transformation of an occupied territory into a different political reality.

At the Applied Research Institute Jerusalem (ARIJ), we have spent decades documenting on-the-ground changes through aerial photos, satellite imagery, field research, geographic information systems, legal analysis, and historical records. Our latest assessment is not an opinion piece disguised as research. It is the result of more than thirty years of systematic evidence gathering, and it raises an uncomfortable question:

At what point does the international community acknowledge that the reality it has accepted no longer resembles the peace process it continues to defend?

The numbers tell a story that diplomacy often fails to capture...

Read more: Opinion: While the World is watching, the Map of Palestine Is Being Redrawn

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THE SUBSIDIZED OCCUPATION: THE BLACK GOLD, PALESTINE AND THE ARABS

Source: Palestine Chronicle
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/the-subsidized-occupation-the-black-gold-palestine-and-the-arabs/

By Dr. M. Reza Behnam
Published July 20, 2026

The black gold that once promised regional self-determination has instead financed a status quo of complicity and servitude, leaving the Palestinian cause marooned on an altar of transactional diplomacy and dynastic preservation.

Trump, Netanyahu, and Arab foreign ministers sign the Abraham Accords at the White House, September 2020. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian, via Wikimedia Commons)

Arab states, particularly the Gulf Cooperation Council monarchies (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates)
control approximately six trillion dollars in sovereign wealth funds in Western markets.

Any coordinated effort to price energy in alternative currencies, diversify reserve holdings away from the dollar,
or liquidate US Treasuries would pose an existential threat to Western financial hegemony.

The modern Middle East suffers from a consequentially glaring paradox: oil-rich Arab states undoubtedly possess some of the most concentrated geopolitical and economic leverage on the planet. Yet, they have, since the 1970s, declined to use their economic indispensability in defense of Palestinian statehood and to uphold their own sovereignty.

The pivot of Arab Gulf states away from historical Arab nationalism to Western alignment reflects a fundamental shift in regional priorities. Arab monarchs have traded their independence and vast regional clout for Western economic integration, advanced defense technology and foreign security assurances.

The global community has, for decades, been led to believe that the path to Palestinian self-determination is a knot too complex to untangle. The reality, however, is far more transactional.

The wealthy Gulf capitals and the wider Arab oil-producing bloc possess four critical pressure points that could be acted on to force a diplomatic breakthrough or affect meaningful regional change. None, however, have been employed: 1) oil power; 2) sovereignty over waterways; 3) petrodollars; and 4) power of the umma.

Oil Power

In 1973, Arab oil-producers demonstrated the efficacy of wielding oil as an economic weapon. It was one of those rare moments when Arab regimes exploited their leverage to challenge Western imperialism...

Read more: The Subsidized Occupation: The Black Gold, Palestine and the Arabs