Period Of The Kennedy Administration To The Process Of Evolution (1961-1963)

The Kennedy era witnessed a vital turning point in the evolution ofAmerican-Israeli relations, which has three steps: The first is the beginning 18months of Kennedy administration, although the ties between the twocountries did not change much, it laid a good basis for the following change;the second, also the key one, is the administration's decision to sell HawkMissiles to Israel, for which Israel had requested more than ten years; whilethe third is the game between Arabs, Israel and America on the resolution ofthe riots in several Arab countries. In the end, a formal and institutionalizedties is established between America and Israel.The Hawk-deal decision has a significant background, which comes fromnot only Israel's long-standing pursuit, but also the intra-governmental debateand Kennedy's full support to the advocates, in which, both historicalcoincidence and the leader's personal factors played a role.The reason why Kennedy supported the decision should be due to hisidealist orientation, i.e. his ambition to carry out the even-handed strategytowards the Arabs and Israel, and to make the latter self-confident, eliminatingits military inferiority and vulnerability compared with the former. So as tomake Israel supportive to the Johnson plan advocated by Kennedy and,accommodative toward the Palestinian refugees. In this way, the Arab-Israelidisputes will be solved and comprehensive peace achieved, then the Sovietinfluence can be prevented outside the middle-east area, in which America hasa very important strategical interests.Furthermore, exactly after the Hawk-deal decision, there were severalemergences in the area, including the Yemen war and the second Jordan crisis.In dealing with such emergences, the three parties competed with each other,while America further adjusted its policy towards Arabs and Israel, with thespecial American-Israeli alliance coming into being.