ABSTRACT
The Israeli hard Right and their American supporters see it as symptomatic of the erstwhile American betrayal, “selling Israel down the river” and fearing more of the same. In exchange, the Israeli government would divulge to the United States the level of its expenditures on settlements prior to receiving the loan guarantees. The Israeli Zionist Left can take solace from the natural advantage it seems to enjoy over annexationist and hard-line Israeli governments when it comes to America’s formal policies and its articulated interests on issues of Jewish settlements and the occupation. Political ideological constituencies in Israel get the lion’s share of attention, particularly the ideological hawks and ideological doves, with their duelling sound bites and street rallies. The potential political cost to an American president of openly colliding with an Israeli government is so steep that it takes a very significant pattern of grievance to elicit the kind of showdown that occurred in the loan-guarantees issue.
