...One of the first things [Obama] did when becoming president was to declare that the letter of guarantees which Pres. George Bush gave to Arik Sharon did not bind him or the U.S. So who can believe that any letter of guarantees he gives now will be any more binding than that?
...he will certainly give a counter letter of guarantees to the Palestinians [and] promises...he won’t ask for any further extension after 90 days...
In 1956-7, in order to get Israel to withdraw from Sinai, the U.S. guaranteed that if Egypt would ever again close the Straits of Tiran to Israel bound shipping, the U.S. would open them.
In May 1967 when Nasser expelled the UN from Sinai and closed the Straits, Abba Eban, Israel’s Foreign Minister, rushed to Washington to ask them to fulfill their guarantee. In the State Department they searched high and low and ransacked all the cupboards, but they couldn’t find the guarantee!
After the Americans made some half-hearted efforts to put together an international flotilla to open the straits, Israel rescued the U.S. from its embarrassment by winning the Six Day War and opening the straits by itself.
[in] the summer of 1970 at the height of the War of Attrition. In order to get Israel to agree to cease fire, the U.S. promised that Egypt would not move its Soviet SAM 3 missiles from Cairo to the Suez Canal...As soon as the cease fire went into effect, Egypt began to move its missiles to the Canal and the American satellites went blind...
...“Does Israel really want to rely on U.S. guarantees after that record?”
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