Obama Denies the Israeli Government’s

Request for Missiles

In an earlier post, I wrote on how the United States government continued to approve sending additional weaponry to Israel as it continued its assault on Gaza. Again, this has been an invasion that has taken the lives of  thousands of innocent children and adults who had nothing to do with the fighting.

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, it seems that the Israeli government bypassed the Executive Branch, instead receiving the support through the Pentagon. And because of this, Obama recently denied Israel’s request to send ‘Hellfire missiles’ to the state. However, this has upset some US representatives who continue to support Israel’s actions, and wanting more military support tot he state (NY Post, 2010).

States Are Not Unitary Actors

I think this is an important example of how we must keep in mind that states are not unified in their actions and decision-making. While we often to refer to them as one entity, we must always keep in mind that we are really referring to one aspect of the state. For as we see, it seems that at least in this case, it seems that Obama had no idea that Israel received the weapons; he did not seem to know that the Pentagon approved this. Thus, in order to understand international relations, one must be aware of all actors and the level of power that each have; by solely focusing on the top leader, one might miss crucial information that can help better analyze what is taking place regarding that particular issue.

In addition, this story also continues to illustrate how government officials are willing to back political allies that are carrying out horrible military offensives if they see that it is in their own interest, or if they have strong alliance with that state. As many have pointed out, there has been little criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza from US officials; many have continued to follow the line that Hamas and their rocket launches were the one that initiated this conflict, as opposed to looking at whether Israeli leaders may have been upset with the unity government between Hamas and Fatah. And it will be interesting to see if the cease-fire holds, how US government officials will respond to the UN war crimes inquiry regarding the conflict in Gaza.