Israeli Foreign Policy
Weapons Manufacturing Industry
... By the end of the 1970s, the Israeli military industry was supplying
40 percent of Israel's military needs. But production runs solely for the
domestic market resulted in high costs per item. The longer production runs
necessary to lower unit costs created an imperative to export.
The government began a concerted marketing campaign, through diplomatic
and military contacts, as well as news releases and exhibits at fairs. In
later years a sales force of retired military officers eager for commissions
fanned out over the globe. While the secrecy of the Israeli government makes
it impossible to exactly calculate the volume of Israel's weapons sales
abroad, the general consensus of analysts of the international arms trade
indicates that between 1972 and 1980 Israel's arms exports soared, particularly
in the latter part of that span, rising from $50 million to top $1 billion,
and, with the possible exception of 1983, have remained over $1 billion
annually. A 1986 estimate puts annual sales at "more than $ 1.25 billion.
Since 1982 Israel has been ranked among the world's top ten arms producers.
The importance to the overall economy of the arms manufacturing sector
also increased, with weapons exports estimated to have comprised 31 percent
of industrial exports in 1975, up from 14 percent in 1967 and more recently
30 to 40 percent of Israel's industrial output. The arms industry employs
"anywhere from 58,000 to as many as 120,000 Israelis," or, taking
the lower figure, percent of the industrial labor force, with the biggest
unit, Israel Aircraft Industries, the nation's largest employer, carrying
20,000 on its payroll.
The export imperative, in turn, brought its own set of problems, these
centering on the overseas markets available to Israel and on its choice
of customers from that list. For varying reasons, Israel was largely shut
out of the Eastern Bloc, the Arab world and NATO countries. That left its
potential clientele to be found on the peripheries: pariahs such as South
Africa and Guatemala, the strong-man regimes of Taiwan, Zaire, and Chile,
and the occasional government wary of strings-attached arms purchases from
the superpowers. Over the years Israel has sold weapons-and often along
with the weapons come Israeli advisers-to Costa Rica, Dominican Republic,
El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua (under Somoza),
Panama, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay,
Peru, Venezuela, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Morocco, Nigeria,
Rhodesia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zaire, Australia, China,
Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Papua-New Guinea, Philippines, Singapore,
Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Iran, and a number of European countries and
several non-governmental actions. Sometimes even the least desirable customers
have required some softening up: "Greatly detailed stories abound of
the huge bribes Israel has used to suborn defense ministries, with the sole
objective of nailing down arms deals."
As time went on an additional problem arose: arms sales became the motor
driving Israel's foreign policy. In times of economic crisis it became the
supreme exigency. In September 1986, the Israeli defense minister explained
to a press conference what was behind a raft of scandals involving Israeli
arms exports and technology thefts (these last, most frequently from the
U.S., have been an inevitable hallmark of a small country attempting to
sustain a full-scale armaments industry). "...We cut our orders in
our military industries..." he said, "and I told them quite frankly:
'Either you'll fire people or find export markets."
The export markets open to Israel are frequently among the world's most
unsavory; indeed, to be off limits to the superpowers they often are located
inside the very gates of hell. Already under international censure for its
oppression of the Palestinians in the territories it occupies, Israel's
dealings with the scum of the world's tyrants-including the white clique
in South Africa, Somoza of Nicaragua, Gen. Pinochet of Chile, Marcos of
the Philippines, Duvalier of Haiti, Mobutu of Zaire, the allegedly cannibalistic
Bokassa of the Central African Republic-invariably result in its further
exclusion from more "respectable" circles. "A person who
sleeps with dogs shouldn't be surprised to find himself covered with fleas,"
comments the military correspondent for Israel's major daily newspaper.
Israeli critics, who term the phenomenon "arms diplomacy,"
warn that the export imperative has motivated a sequence of ad hoc, opportunistic
decisions that have precluded the development of a coherent foreign policy,
which, in turn, might over the long term mitigate Israel's isolated position
in the world. Yet these critics are far from sanguine about the ability
of Israel to set itself on a different course.
They point to the power of the "security establishment lobby,"
comprised of the upper echelon of Israel's political leadership (this has
remained remarkably constant since the founding of the state), the top levels
of the military, and the officials of the parastatal arms industries. As
in the U.S., there is a "revolving door" in Israel, with many
of the top figures serving successively in two or all three of these sectors.
It is these men who find the clients and have insider access to the Ministerial
Committee on Weapons Transfers (MCD)-its members are the prime minister
and the ministers of defense, foreign affairs, and trade and industry which
will make the final decision on every sale. Such decisions are made secretly-
the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, excluded. The cabinet, too, is often
excluded. Critics of the hegemony of the arms export business say it has
relegated the foreign ministry to a subordinate role in Israeli foreign
policy making, and they see in its wake grave social and political consequences.
' A sector has evolved in Israel, headed by an elite with identical
social characteristics and marked by a fairly high degree of cohesiveness,
whose decisions and actions have a significant effect not only on the country's
economy and its foreign and | defense policy but also on its social and
value systems. No less important, however, is the issue of whether a closed
system has been created whose activities and decisions undergo less public
supervision and scrutiny than any other area of life in the country. '
A Co-equal Type of Proxy
Israeli analysts often argue that Israeli arms sales are dependent on
U.S. approval; in a limited sense this is true. The U.S. has blocked-at
the behest of Britain-the delivery of A-4 Skyhawks to Argentina, and it
has in the past vetoed the export of the Kfir aircraft, leverage it is able
to exert because of the Kfir's U.S. engine. However, the Carter Administration
was unable to prevent Israeli nuclear cooperation with South Africa, and
the Reagan Administration was unsuccessful in persuading the Israelis to
halt their arms sales to Iran in the early 1980s (assuming it wanted to).
The Israeli success in persuading the Reagan Administration to incorporate
Israeli arms sales to the Islamic Republic into a bizarre and controversial
series of contacts with Iranian leaders is probably more typical of the
operative U.S.-lsraeli dynamic.
On the other hand, Israel has often obliged this or that sector of the
U.S. government, selling arms where it would be embarrassing or illegal
for the U.S. to do so: the contras, the Peoples Republic of China in the
early 1980s, and the Derg government of Ethiopia are examples. In 1975,
Israel followed Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's advice and helped South
Africa with its invasion of Angola. Even after the passage the following
year of the Clark Amendment forbidding U.S. covert involvement in Angola,
Israel apparently considered Kissinger's nod a continuing mandate.
Given the export imperative under which the Israeli government operates,
this 1981 proposal from the chief economic coordinator in the Israeli cabinet,
Yacov Meridor, should be taken with great seriousness:
" We are going to say to the Americans, 'Don't compete with us
in South Africa, don't compete with us in the Caribbean or in any other
country where you can't operate in the open.' Let us do it. I even use the
expression, ' You sell the ammunition and equipment by proxy. Israel will
be your proxy,' and this would be worked out with a certain agreement with
the United States where we will have certain markets...which will be left
for us. "
Home Page