Israel: A Sovereign State on a Short Leash

For most of its history, Israel’s alliance with the United States rested on an unwritten understanding: Israel depended on Washington, but the final decisions were made in Jerusalem. Today, more and more Israelis are beginning to question that assumption.

American pressure during the Gaza war, efforts to limit Israel’s response to Iran, and even Trump’s intervention in Benjamin Netanyahu’s criminal trial have reinforced a growing perception that Washington is no longer merely influencing Israeli decisions but increasingly defining their boundaries. The question troubling many Israelis today is whether Israel’s necessary dependence on the United States has begun to come at the expense of its freedom of action.

Until recently, most Israelis would have dismissed such a claim out of hand. Dependence on the United States was viewed as a strategic necessity, not as a threat to sovereignty. American presidents could advise, criticize, or pressure Israel, but the final decision was always assumed to remain Israeli. Today, that assumption is being tested.

The first signs emerged during the Gaza war. When Donald Trump pushed for a ceasefire and helped secure the release of hostages, many Israelis welcomed the outcome. Few paused to ask what the episode revealed about the balance of power between the two countries. The striking fact was that a major diplomatic and security development was driven not in Jerusalem but in the White House.

The same pattern reappeared in the confrontation with Iran. Following the latest missile attack, Trump publicly suggested that Netanyahu would act in accordance with his wishes and pressed Israel to refrain from military retaliation. According to a report by Ronen Bergman, Israel even considered a much broader strike but backed away after American intervention. The issue is not whether every detail of these reports is accurate. It is that an American president spoke and acted as though he possessed the authority to determine the limits of Israel’s response.

The pattern did not stop in the security realm. Trump’s public intervention on Netanyahu’s behalf in his criminal trial signaled a willingness to involve himself in one of Israel’s most sensitive domestic matters. An American president felt comfortable exerting pressure regarding Israel’s judicial and political systems, a line most of his predecessors avoided crossing.

The reactions on Israeli social media reflect a deeper unease: the possibility that Israel’s freedom of action is far more constrained than many citizens had assumed.

Netanyahu’s supporters will argue that there is nothing new here. During the 1991 Gulf War, President George H. W. Bush asked Israel not to respond to Iraqi Scud missile attacks, and Israel complied. Most Israelis did not view that as capitulation to American pressure. They saw it as a decision by the government of Yitzhak Shamir, which accepted Washington’s position because it believed doing so served Israel’s interests. Israel may have been influenced by the United States, but the decision was perceived as Israeli.

Moreover, in the early 1990s, Shamir openly confronted the Bush administration over American loan guarantees and settlement policy. Israel paid a price for that confrontation, but Shamir said “no” to an American president when he believed Israeli interests required it. The same was true when Menachem Begin ordered the strike on Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981 despite fierce American opposition.

Today’s atmosphere feels fundamentally different, in part because of Trump’s style and his relationship with Netanyahu. When an American president publicly boasts that he “sets the rules” or declares that Netanyahu will do whatever he asks, a hierarchy is created. Trump has gone further, stating that Netanyahu “will have no choice” and that “I’m the one who decides.”

Israel is militarily stronger than ever, yet more and more Israelis are confronting a paradox: military power and political independence do not always advance together. Previous American presidents pressured Israel, but they generally avoided speaking as though they were directing Israeli policy. Trump shows no such restraint. Precisely because many Israelis regard him as a genuine friend, his remarks are often treated with unusual leniency. Yet they expose a troubling reality: the relationship increasingly resembles a system in which Washington defines the boundaries of what Israel may or may not do.

The alliance that made Israel so strong also expanded America’s leverage. As American support became more indispensable, Washington’s ability to shape Israeli choices grew accordingly. What troubles many Israelis is not dependence itself, which has existed for decades, but the possibility that it is gradually narrowing Israel’s room for maneuver.

There is also a deeper dimension. Netanyahu’s government has increasingly treated military power as the central instrument of national policy, while diplomacy has been pushed to the margins. Yet a strategy built primarily on military force creates its own form of dependence. Armies require weapons, ammunition, spare parts, intelligence cooperation, and diplomatic protection. When these are supplied largely by a single great power, strategic flexibility inevitably shrinks. A country that cultivates diplomatic tools preserves alternatives. A country that relies primarily on military force becomes dependent on those who provide the means to exercise it. In this sense, Israel’s diminishing freedom of action is not merely the product of American pressure; it is also the result of Israel’s own choices.

The discussion is also tied to a growing sense of strategic failure. Nearly three years after October 7, Hamas still controls Gaza, Hezbollah continues to threaten the north, and Iran is widely perceived as more emboldened and self-confident. As dependence on the United States deepens, Israel’s freedom of action appears to narrow while its ability to achieve decisive strategic outcomes continues to erode.

Many Israelis troubled by America’s growing influence are not necessarily advocating further military escalation. Quite the opposite. Many believe the wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran should be brought to an end and replaced by a serious diplomatic effort. From this perspective, American pressure has acted as a restraining force and may have prevented a broader regional conflagration. The central question is what these events reveal about the balance of power between Washington and Jerusalem and how much freedom of action Israel still retains.

Donald Trump is widely regarded as the most enthusiastic supporter Israel has ever had in the White House. That is precisely why the present moment is so unsettling. Dependence imposed by an adversary provokes immediate resistance. Dependence on a close friend is far more difficult to recognize.

The reality that has emerged contains a profound paradox. Many Israelis fear that their country’s freedom of action is shrinking because of its dependence on the United States. At the same time, many Americans have reached the opposite conclusion. In their view, sustained Israeli pressure regarding Iran’s nuclear program and the close ties between Jerusalem and Washington contributed to America’s decision to join the campaign against Iran. From this perspective, the problem is not that Washington constrains Israel, but that Israel exercises excessive influence over American policy and draws the United States into conflicts that do not necessarily serve a clear American national interest.

In that sense, the debate on both sides of the Atlantic resembles a mirror image. Many Americans worry that Israel exerts too much influence over Washington’s decisions. Many Israelis worry that Washington exerts too much influence over Jerusalem’s decisions. While Americans increasingly ask whether Israel is leading America, Israelis are beginning to ask whether America is leading Israel.

Nations, like individuals, place great value on dignity, independence, and the ability to shape their own destiny. Israel’s challenge today is not military weakness. It is the growing realization that even a powerful state can find itself operating within boundaries defined by others.

Sooner or later, the war with Iran will end. Trump and Netanyahu will leave the stage. Yet the alliance they leave behind will be different from the one they inherited. It will not collapse. But neither will it be able to return to what it once was. The challenge facing the next generation of leaders in Jerusalem and Washington will be to find a new equilibrium—one that allows close cooperation without fostering perceptions of subordination on one side or excessive influence on the other.

The erosion of mutual trust may ultimately prove to be the deepest fracture left behind by the Trump-Netanyahu era in a relationship that, for decades, rested on it.