All numbers here are as reported in the CIA World Factbook, except the last row which is me calculating GDP times % of GDP spent by the military.

The sources of these numbers are not always crystal clear, so we can take them with a grain of salt, but still they yield some insights. Israel is just a small country. It’s about a tenth the size of Iran or Egypt in terms of population (I’m not sure how settlers and people in occupied territories are counted, be we are talking orders of magnitude here), and about a quarter to a third the size of Iran, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia in terms of GDP. An average person lives a rich country lifestyle and enjoys a long life in Israel, but in terms of sheer amount spent on the military you can see why they need foreign (i.e. U.S.) assistance and conscription to be on a similar level with these other countries in the region. I threw in Jordan, but it is a relatively small, not very wealthy country by these numbers. You can see why they would prefer not to get in fights with their neighbors or the world’s superpowers.

Please note: I wrote this before the fast-moving current events of Friday, April 19, 2024.

According to the (paywalled) Financial Times, an Israeli and/or US military strike on Iran could involve half a dozen important oil producing countries as well as snarling shipping traffic. This would seem like particularly bad news for Biden as Americans fuel up their planet-burning behemoths for the “summer driving season” followed by the fall voting season.

This is an article from 1996 in something called the Washington Report for Middle East Affairs. Here are some facts about Benjamin Netanyahu as reported by this article.

1. He went to high school in suburban Philadelphia. (I looked up elsewhere, and it was Cheltenham high school. This is a public school district in a not particularly posh area.) Then MIT.
2. He was a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, at least at that point of graduating MIT.
3. He has gone by at least four names. One of the three alternates is just a shortened version, but the other two are John Jay Sullivan and John Jay Sullivan Jr.
4. His social security file is marked “classified”. According to this article, that suggests he may have been on the payroll of the CIA or FBI.
5. To run for office, he had to give up his U.S. citizenship, which he did legally in Israel. But in the U.S., at least according to this article and in 1996, he was still legally considered a U.S. citizen. (This situation is not unusual though, as I know plenty of people in ambiguous dual citizen categories in their home countries for one reason of convenience or another. An innocent one is because someone lives in the U.S. but wants to visit family in their home country for an extended period without applying for a tourist visa.)

The article veers into some interesting territory from there, but I found these apparently fact-based nuggets interesting.

When I first heard about a conceptual “grand bargain” under the Obama administration, the general idea was normalization of relations between the U.S., Iran, and Israel in exchange for Iran giving up its nuclear weapons program (maybe in exchange for a well monitored nuclear power program) and Israel allowing the creation of a Palestinian state. This obviously didn’t happen.

Before these ideas, there were smaller actual bargains including peace between Israel and most of its neighbors under Carter, and movement toward a Palestinian state under Clinton.

Before the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, the latest idea was a formal normalization of (already de facto?) diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, possibly in exchange for nuclear power for Saudi Arabia. Iran was left out of this, and in fact it seemed to be the solidification of an anti-Iran block. The Palestinians were also left out of this, as far as I know. So now it seems to me that Biden is proposing a return to this deal that was already essentially made, and trying to add some progress toward a Palestinian state in the mix. It doesn’t seem that likely to me, at least until a new generation of leadership takes over in Israel, and unless/until Biden gets re-elected or a new generation of leadership takes over in the U.S.

It seems to me that the “grand” bargain is getting smaller and more cynical all the time. Still, one thing we can count on is the passage of time, and new leadership eventually taking over in all countries involved. One can hope for a brighter picture 5-10 years down the line. Hoping for a brighter picture by November 2024 seems a bit wishful to me.