Why not US troop bases in Israel?

Great Debates
1

All right, I’m almost sure this is one of those Friday-midnight post-party ideas (yeah, it’s midnight here in India) that seem new and remarkable because they’re too stupid for most people’s serious consideration. But just in case:

  • If the US needs a major military force stationed in the Middle East, which many people seem to think necessary to the security of Israel and to US economic and political interests;

  • and we’ve given up on keeping them in Saudi Arabia, partly because of widespread Muslim hostility to the perceived US dominance of Muslim holy sites there;

  • and if a continued major US military presence in Iraq could unnecessarily prolong hostilities there due to resentment against us as foreign occupiers;

  • then why don’t we just put US military bases in the territory of our close ally Israel, instead of in some tenuously allied or largely hostile Muslim country?

There’s probably a very obvious and simple reason against this that will make me feel stupid for asking the question, but on the whole I’d rather feel more stupid and less ignorant. What’s the problem? Not enough room? Too much concentration of forces? Against the law? Why isn’t this a good, or at least defensible, idea?

2

I suspect that no Arab country in the region would cooperate with troops out of Israel. We probably couldn’t fly them over Arab air space, etc. Better to use Turkey, a NATO member.

Plus it would make it look like we were taking sides in the I/P conflict (although how it doesn’t look that way even w/o troops is beyond me).

3

Invading a middle eastern country from Israel would really get the Arabs cooking.

You could hardly avoid being draw closer into a conflict should some of Israel’s neighbours chose to attack Israel again – and for all the close ties between Israel and the US, there have never been any kind of formal defence pact or American troops fighting alongside Israeli (except perhaps for the patriot missile battery operators during Golf War I).