Abstract

Over the course of more than seven decades, U.S.–Israeli relations have undergone significant transformations that have shaped the contemporary foreign policy course of the United States in the Middle Eastern region. At the outset, the United States did not envisage the use of its armed forces in the region and sought to maintain a balance in its relations with the Arab oil-supplying states. The Palestine question, and subsequently the creation of the State of Israel, gradually introduced important adjustments into Washington's Middle Eastern strategy. Israel increasingly became the United States' principal partner in the region, while Washington found itself ever more deeply involved in the complex Arab-Israeli conflict. The present article examines the development of this issue in the first postwar years, when a new U.S. foreign policy strategy was taking shape and the problem of Palestine came to occupy an important place in the policies of several states. The watershed of the 1940s — the end of the Second World War and the onset of the Cold War — ushered in a new global foreign policy landscape and triggered a series of geopolitical crises, including the Arab-Israeli conflict, which has not been brought to an end because the underlying Palestine question has not been definitively resolved. An analysis of congressional materials and public opinion makes it possible to identify the importance of the Palestine question for the United States both in terms of its geopolitical interests and in light of Washington's efforts to displace traditional actors from the region. The debates and resolutions considered in Congress reflect the complexity and significance of the issue, even though the final decisions regarding Palestine ultimately remained in the hands of the executive branch. At the same time, congressional materials constitute a complex source that requires a variety of methodological approaches. The author shows that the Palestine question intersected with several strategic directions of U.S. postwar foreign policy and underscores its importance and relevance for understanding broader global processes in the region. The study employs quantitative analysis, which makes it possible to trace the peaks and troughs of discussion surrounding Palestine in 1946–1947.