The American elite and political institutions as a whole have agreed to support Israel since its founding in 1948. Throughout the history of the United States’s association with the Arab-Israeli conflict, Congress has taken stances strongly supportive of Israel compared to the positions of the White House.

The rates of broad support for Israel did not differ among members of both houses of Congress according to party affiliation. Democrats and Republicans competed in showing support for Israel, and this support was not linked to the presence of a Republican or Democrat in the White House.

Traditionally, the president, and his team of aides inside the White House or in various ministries, have been less eager to provide blind support to Israel, and Republican and Democratic presidents have been forced on several occasions to curb the rush of Congress in its support for Israeli policies and positions.

The current Israeli aggression against the Palestinians, and the reactions of members of Congress from both parties and within the House of Representatives and the Senate, show the harbingers of an unprecedented exchange of positions and roles, as the White House stands in greater support than Congress for the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem and the West Bank.

On Monday, the House Foreign Relations Committee announced its intention to send a letter to President Joe Biden's administration requesting that a $ 735 million military deal worth of precision-guided missiles be postponed to Israel.

The delay would allow lawmakers to review the sale, a departure from the text of strong support for Tel Aviv in Congress.

The White House facing Congress

Away from the identity of the White House resident’s party affiliation, Congress took political positions in support of Israel, and succeeded in passing legislation that obligated the White House and the rest of the US administration to adhere to policies that entrench the broad American support for Israel,

as shown in the following points:

Congress maintains Israel's qualitative military advantage over all Arab countries

The Congress has adopted several legislations to ensure the continuation of the Israeli military success over the combined Arab armies, through a bilateral strategy, and the provision of the latest types of weapons - produced by US military technology to Israel - was the first method of this strategy.

Over recent decades, Israel has received the latest American aircraft such as the F-16 (F-16) or the latest version and the latest F-35 (F-35) without any objection from Congress, but has met with widespread encouragement and calls to facilitate the payment of the cost of these Aircraft or reducing their prices, and providing some financial assistance to speed up the completion of these deals.

Arab states are receiving less sophisticated versions of the planes that Israel acquires, and acquiring the weapons years after Tel Aviv acquired them.

For example: Aircraft arrived to Israel in 1978, while Saudi Arabia and Egypt acquired them at the end of 1981.

On the other hand, and to ensure the Israeli military superiority, Congress enacted laws guaranteeing the qualitative military superiority of Israel. Congress does not pass any military deal to the countries of the region without carefully reviewing it.

In many cases, Congress obstructed the granting of licenses to export advanced weapons to the Arab allies.

Among the most famous of these cases is the attempt by Congress to block the deal of AWACS planes to Saudi Arabia in the 1980s, prompting Republican President Ronald Reagan for a long confrontation with Congress, despite his party's control of the majority of both houses.

The UAE deal related to F-35s has not escaped from the guillotine of Congress, which is trying to block its completion, despite its broad support for the Abraham peace accords between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi.

The American F-35 planes that Israel bought to preserve its military superiority in the region (Al-Jazeera)

Providing generous aid to Israel

Congress has paid and welcomed the provision of generous aid to Israel since its inception, and studies of the Congressional Research Service indicate that Tel Aviv received $ 105.5 billion in US aid between 1848 and 2020.

In addition, Israel receives exceptional aid, estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars annually, to support specific programs such as financing the air defense program known as "Iron Dome", programs to counter and uncover Hamas tunnels, and to finance Israeli scientific and technological research programs.

Despite some stagnation in the relations of the two countries due to the administration of former President Barack Obama to conclude the nuclear agreement with Iran, Congress pushed to provide an aid package estimated at 38 billion dollars to Israel over a period of 10 years to satisfy Washington's contract with Tehran.

Continuing political pressure on the White House

Congress has repeatedly pressed the White House to push it to change its policies that it deems insufficient to support Israel, regardless of the party with the majority in Congress or the party affiliation of the president.

Among the most famous of these positions is the recognition by Congress in 1995 of Jerusalem as the united and eternal capital of Israel, and the White House’s request to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city.

The American presidents, in succession, opposed this decision and used a presidential right that enabled it to delay its implementation for a period of 6 months, and it was renewed periodically by Democratic President Bill Clinton, Republican George Bush and Democrat Barack Obama.

Former President Donald Trump violated the presidential custom of transferring his country's embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing it as the capital of Israel.

Congress also pressed the Obama administration to block a nuclear agreement with Iran, and the Republican members united with the Democrats and the Israeli Prime Minister was invited to speak before a joint session of Congress in support of opposition to the agreement, but Obama was determined to move in the direction of signing the agreement.

Reasons for the broad support for Israel in Congress

The nature of the American political system and the religious dimension of evangelical Protestants allowed broad support for Israel among members of Congress.

The Israeli lobby organizations, led by AIPAC, play a large and influential role in the congressional adoption of policies and positions in support of Israel.

An aide in the House of Representatives assured Al-Jazeera Net that "many of the legislations and letters presented by the members and related to the issues of the Arab-Israeli conflict are written by AIPAC and directed to more than one member in order to put their names on it and adopt it, and push the rest of the members to sign them."

On the other hand, the nature of the division of the parliament into 435 small constituencies, and the limitation of the legislative period to only two years, until the elections became a sword hanging over the necks of members.

AIPAC carefully monitors the voting pattern of each member, and supports and funds campaigns for the re-election of these candidates or pumps money to get rid of opponents of its positions.

The strength of this lobby varies according to the electoral district and according to the popularity of the candidates, but it remains an element that members of Congress cannot ignore.

From the left: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayana Presley, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar (communication sites)

What is changing now?

What the Congress has witnessed since the beginning of the aggression on Gaza does not represent an end to the wide support that Israel enjoys within the House of Representatives and the Senate, but at the same time the importance of the new phenomenon of boldly rejecting Israeli positions and the way the White House deals with the aggression and its repercussions cannot be underestimated.

At the initiative of John Usoff, a Jewish Democrat from Georgia, 28 of the 100 senators moved to demand a ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians.

Before that, a similar number of members of the House of Representatives moved to demand President Biden to take a more assertive stance to push Israel to stop its aggression.

This new reality in Congress reflects an American societal shift, which is still slow, between many democratic and liberal voters, which was contributed to by increasing awareness of the concepts of equality, systemic discrimination, and racism, and linking the suffering of American minorities with the suffering of the Palestinian people.

During the past two years, the House of Representatives witnessed the resilience of two Muslim lawmakers: Ilhan Omar from Minnesota and Rashida Talib from Michigan, in the face of widespread attacks by Jewish lobby organizations and groups supporting President Trump, and they succeeded in winning a second round in the elections last November.

The trends of the Congressional Women's Progressive Quartet, which consists of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, in addition to Representative Ayanna Presley and the famous left-wing Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, represented support and a major change in the strength of the congressional position vis-à-vis the administration and the White House, which did not move aggressively to stop the Israeli aggression. Most of it is committed with American weapons and equipment.