US Aid and Israeli military
might
America Provides Israel A
Qualitative Military
THE STRATEGIC FUNCTIONS OF U.S. AID
TO ISRAEL
Advantage
The Jewish Student Online
Research Center (JSOURCE)
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/US-Israel/qualitative.html
The United States provided
only a limited amount of arms to Israel, including ammunition and recoilless
rifles, prior to 1962. In that year, President Kennedy sold HAWK anti-aircraft
missiles, but only after the Soviet Union provided Egypt with long-range
bombers.
By 1965, the U.S. had
become Israel's main arms supplier. This was partially necessitated by West
Germany's acquiescence to Arab pressure, which led it to stop selling tanks to
Israel. As was true throughout most of the Johnson Administration, however, the
sale of arms to Israel was balanced by corresponding transfers to the Arabs.
Thus, the first U.S. tank sale to Israel, in 1965, was offset by a
similar sale to Jordan.
The U.S. did not provide
Israel with aircraft until 1966. Even then, secret agreements were made to
provide the same planes to Morocco and Libya, and additional military equipment
was sent to Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia.
As in 1948, the U.S.
imposed an arms embargo on Israel during the Six-Day War, while the Arabs
continued to receive Soviet arms. Israel's position was further undermined by
the French decision to embargo arms transfers to the Jewish State, effectively
ending their role as Israel's only other major supplier.
It was only after it
became clear that Israel had no other sources of arms, and that the Soviet
Union had no interest in limiting its sales to the region, that President
Johnson agreed to sell Israel Phantom jets that gave the Jewish State its first
qualitative advantage. "We will henceforth become the principal arms
supplier to Israel," Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Warnke told
Israeli Ambassador Yitzhak Rabin, "involving us even more intimately with
Israel's security
situation and involving more directly the security of the United States."
From that point on, the
U.S. began to pursue a policy whereby Israel's qualitative edge was maintained.
The U.S. has also remained committed, however, to arming Arab nations,
providing sophisticated missiles, tanks and aircraft to Jordan, Morocco, Egypt,
Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. Thus, while Israel received F-15s in 1978, so
too did Egypt and Saudi Arabia. In 1981, Saudi Arabia, for the first time,
received a weapons system that gave it a qualitative advantage over
Israel—AWACS radar planes.
http://www.mepc.org/zunes.htm
Stephen Zunes
Dr. Zunes is an assistant
professor in the Department of Politics at the University of San Francisco.
T he United States aid relationship
with Israel is unlike any other in the world, or indeed, like any in history.
In sheer
volume, the amount of aid
is the most generous foreign-aid program ever between any two countries,
totaling $77.726
billion through fiscal
year 1996. No country, including South Vietnam, has ever received as much
congressionally
mandated aid as has
Israel. Indeed, Israel receives more U.S. aid per capita annually than the
total annual GNP per
capita of several Arab
states, including Egypt, Mauritania, Sudan, Yemen and Morocco. What is perhaps
even more
unusual is that Israel,
like its benefactor, is an advanced, industrialized, technologically
sophisticated country, as well
as a major arms exporter.
This paper examines the
nature and extent of U.S. foreign aid to Israel, the strategic roots of this
aid, how the
relationship has been
affected by the changing world order, the aid policy of the Clinton
administration, its military
component, its impact on
Israel, the debate within both Israel and the United States, and the impact of
aid on the
Middle East peace process.
THE NATURE OF U.S. AID
U.S. aid to Israel began
in the early 1950s with small grants and expanded modestly over the next decade
to include
Export-Import Bank loans,
Food for Peace aid and general economic loans. Military loans began only after
the 1967
war. These were replaced
entirely by grants in 1985. U.S. economic aid increased greatly in subsequent
years, and
grants replaced loans for
economic assistance in 1981. In recent years, the annual U.S. subsidy for
Israel has
remained at approximately
$3 billion in military and economic grants, in addition to more than $500
million from other
parts of the budget or
off-budget. Unlike most U.S. recipients of economic aid, who are required to
use the bulk of the
money for specific
projects, such as buying certain U.S. agricultural surpluses or finished goods,
Israel gets to put its
aid directly into the
government treasury. In every other country, officials of the U.S. Agency for
International
Development (USAID)
oversee the actual programs, either administered directly, through
non-governmental
organizations, or under
cosponsorship with a government agency. Since 1971, however, Israel has been
the exception:
the U.S. government sets
the funding level and these become simply cash transfers to the Israeli
government. Since
1992, the U.S. has offered
Israel an additional $2 billion annually in loan guarantees. Congressional
researchers have
disclosed that between
1974 and 1989, $16.4 billion in U.S. military loans were converted to grants
and that this was
the understanding from the
beginning. Indeed, all past U.S. loans to Israel have eventually been forgiven
by Congress,
which has undoubtedly
helped Israel's often-touted claim that they have never defaulted on a U.S.
government loan.
U.S. policy since 1984 has
been that economic assistance to Israel must equal or exceed Israel's annual
debt
repayment to the United
States. Unlike other countries, which receive aid in quarterly installments,
aid to Israel since
1982 has been given in a
lump sum at the beginning of the fiscal year, leaving the U.S. government to
borrow from
future revenues. Israel
even lends some of this money back through U.S. treasury bills and collects the
additional
interest. In addition, there
is the more than $1.5 billion in private U.S. funds that go to Israel annually
in the form of
$1 billion in private
tax-deductible donations and $500 million in Israeli bonds. The ability of
Americans to make what
amounts to tax-deductible
contributions to a foreign government, made possible through a number of Jewish
charities,
does not exist with any
other country. Nor do these figures include short- and long-term commercial
loans from U.S.
banks, which have been as
high as $1 billion annually in recent years.
Total U.S. aid to Israel
is approximately one-third of the American foreign-aid budget, even though
Israel comprises
just .001 percent of the
world's population and already has one of the world's higher per capita
incomes. Indeed,
Israel's GNP is higher
than the combined GNP of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza.
With a per
capita income of about
$14,000, Israel ranks as the sixteenth wealthiest country in the world;
Israelis enjoy a higher
per capita income than
oil-rich Saudi Arabia and are only slightly less well-off than most Western
European countries.
AID does not term economic
aid to Israel as development assistance, but instead uses the term
"economic support
funding." Given
Israel's relative prosperity, U.S. aid to Israel is becoming increasingly
controversial. In 1994, Yossi
Beilen, deputy foreign
minister of Israel and a Knesset member, told the Women's International Zionist
organization,
"If our economic
situation is better than in many of your countries, how can we go on asking for
your charity?"
THE ROOTS OF U.S. AID
POLICY
The U.S. commitment to
Israel has often been articulated by American officials in moral terms, even
presenting the
issue as a case of a
democracy battling for its very survival. Yet, were this actually the primary
motivation for the aid
program, U.S. aid to
Israel would have been highest in the early years of the existence of the
Jewish state, when its
democratic institutions
were strongest and its strategic situation most vulnerable, and would have
declined as its
military power grew
dramatically and its repression of Palestinians in the occupied territories
increased. Instead, the
trend has been in just the
opposite direction: major U.S. military and economic aid did not begin until
after the 1967
war. Indeed, 99 percent of
U.S. military assistance to Israel since its establishment came only after
Israel proved
itself to be far stronger
than any combination of Arab armies and after Israeli occupation forces became
the rulers of a
large Palestinian
population.
In the hypothetical event
that all U.S. aid to Israel were immediately cut off, it would be many years
before Israel
would be under
significantly greater military threat than it is today. Israel has both a major
domestic arms industry
and an existing military
force far more capable and powerful than any conceivable combination of
opposing forces.
While a cutoff of economic
support might force Israel to negotiate a settlement with the Palestinians that
would end
the expensive patchwork of
Israeli control and subsidizing of settlements, thereby increasing the
likelihood of
Palestinian statehood
alongside Israel, there would be no question of Israel's survival being at risk
militarily in the
foreseeable future.
One of the most
fundamental principles in the theory of international relations is that the
most stable military
relationship between
adversaries (besides disarmament) is strategic parity. Such a relationship
provides an effective
deterrent for both sides
against a preemptive attack by the other. If it were concerned simply with
Israel's security,
the United States would be
dedicated to maintaining Israeli defenses to the point where they would be
approximately
equal to any realistic
combination of Arab armed forces. Instead, leaders of both American political
parties have called
for the United States to
help maintain not a military balance between Israel and its neighbors, but
qualitative Israeli
military superiority. When
Israel was less dominant militarily, there was no such consensus for U.S.
backing of Israel.
The continued high levels
of U.S. aid to Israel does not likely come out of concern for Israel's
survival. One
explanation may come from
a desire for Israel to continue its strategic and political dominance over the
Palestinians
and the region as a whole.
Indeed, the primary reason
for the direction of U.S. policy is the role Israel plays for the United
States. Israel has
successfully prevented
victories by radical nationalist movements in Lebanon, Jordan and Yemen, as
well as in
Palestine. They have kept
Syria, for many years an ally of the Soviet Union, in check. Their air force is
predominant
throughout the region.
Israel's frequent wars have provided battlefield testing for American arms,
often against Soviet
weapons. They have been a
conduit for U.S. arms to regimes and movements too unpopular in the United
States to be
openly granted direct
military assistance, such as South Africa, Iran, Guatemala and the Nicaraguan
Contras. Israeli
military advisers have
assisted the Contras, the Salvadoran junta, and other movements and governments
backed by
the United States. The
Mossad has cooperated with the CIA and other similar U.S. services in
intelligence gathering
and covert operations.
Israel has missiles capable of reaching the former Soviet Union and has
cooperated with the
U.S. military-industrial
complex with research and development for new jet fighters, anti-missile
defense systems and
even the Strategic Defense
Initiative, a relationship that is expected to continue. As one Israeli analyst
described it
during the Iran-Contra
scandal, "It's like Israel has become just another federal agency, one
that's convenient to use
when you want something
done quietly."
The pattern of U.S. aid to
Israel is revealing. Immediately following Israel's spectacular victory in the
1967 war, when
it demonstrated its
military superiority in the region, U.S. aid shot up by 450 percent. Part of
this increase, according
to The New York Times, was
apparently related to Israel's willingness to provide the United States with
examples of
new Soviet weapons
captured during the war. Following the 1970-71 civil war in Jordan, when
Israel's potential to curb
revolutionary movements
outside its borders became apparent, aid increased another sevenfold. After
Arab armies in
the 1973 war were
successfully countered by the largest U.S. airlift in history, with Israel
demonstrating its power to
defeat surprisingly strong
Soviet-supplied forces, military aid increased by another 800 percent. These
increases
paralleled the British
decision to withdraw forces from "east of Suez," which also led to
the massive arms sales and
logistical cooperation
with the shah's Iran, a key component of the Nixon Doctrine.
Aid quadrupled again in
1979 soon after the fall of the shah, the election of the right-wing Likud
government, and the
ratification of the Camp
David accords. Aid increased yet again soon after the 1982 Israeli invasion of
Lebanon. In
1983 and 1984, when the
United States and Israel signed memoranda of understanding on strategic
cooperation and
military planning and
conducted their first joint naval and air military exercises, Israel was
rewarded by an additional
$1.5 billion in economic
aid, as well as another $500,000 for the development of a new jet fighter.
During and
immediately after the Gulf
War, U.S. aid increased an additional $650 million.
The correlation is clear:
the stronger and more willing Israel is to cooperate with U.S. interests, the
higher the level of
aid.
POLICY DEBATES
In reality, the history of
unconditional U.S. aid to Israel is not that unfamiliar: it is a result of the
same kind of
thinking that has guided
U.S. policy elsewhere. As Ron Young observes in his study Missed Opportunities
for Peace,
the same world view --an
emphasis on military solutions to political problems, the underestimation of
the power of
popular movements, the
tendency to take an exaggerated East-West perspective, and the insistence on
unilateral
initiatives--has dominated
U.S. policy towards Israel and the Middle East as well. The perception of
Middle East
exceptionalism in U.S.
foreign policy has made the widespread dissemination and discussion of
critiques of that policy
even more difficult than
on other issues.
Traditionally, there has
been a division among foreign-policy elites regarding the wisdom of such large
scale and
unconditional support for
the Israeli government. One group, often referred to as the "State
Department Arabists,"
held that the Arab world
has much more to offer the United States strategically and economically than
does Israel.
Supporting of a militant
Israel, they argued, could lead to strong anti-American sentiment in the Arab
world and
increasing instability in
the region. The other faction, which has traditionally been dominant, holds
that Israel is
sufficiently strong
militarily to play a stabilizing role. Furthermore, whatever the resentment
from the Arab masses,
there is little political
pluralism in the Arab world to worry about, and most Arab leaders--due to their
investment of
petrodollars in the West,
recognition of Western military power, or general conservatism--can forgive the
United
States for its support of
Israel. By blaming the "Jewish lobby" rather than American leaders
for Washington's hostile
position towards the Arab
world, a perspective often deliberately encouraged by American diplomants, they
can
absolve the U.S.
government of its responsibility. Indeed, since Israel is a status quo power
whose interests often
coincide with those of
Arab regimes, a strong Israel can actually be to their advantage, not just
because it offers
protection against radical
challenges from within and from outside, but because it serves as a useful
diversion for
popular dissatisfaction
with their own leadership.
During the first 20 years
following Israel's victory in the 1967 war, this latter tendency dominated U.S.
foreign-policy
circles, particularly
during the Reagan administration. Indeed, most of the Arabists were purged or
had retired by the
1980s. However, the
intifada led to a slight shift in perceptions. The inability of Israeli
military might to curb popular
resistance in the occupied
territories and the dangerous precedent it set for possible insurrections
against pro-Western
Arab leaders led to a
reevaluation of the role of the Israeli military as a stabilizing force.
Combined with the end of
the Cold War, which
lessened the need for Israel as a major link in the "strategic
consensus" against possible Soviet
penetration in the Middle
East, the intifada resulted in the Bush administration's challenging Israeli
policies to a
degree unheard of in
Washington for more than a generation. These protests were in rhetoric only
--unconditional
military and economic aid
to the Israeli government continued to flow--but it did indicate something of a
more
balanced policy, at least
symbolically.
In addition, the dramatic
increase in military cooperation and arms transfers to the states of the Gulf
Cooperation
Council (GCC) during and
after the Gulf War demonstrated that Israel was not the only country on which
the United
States relied to maintain
its interests in the region. However, it soon became clear that the potentially
unstable Gulf
monarchies, still
suspicious of U.S. intentions and lacking the advantages of Israel in terms of
well-trained forces,
technological
sophistication, and ability to mobilize their human and material resources,
could never be a substitute
for the U.S. alliance with
Israel.
The Gulf War proved once
again that, rather than being a liability, Israel was a strategic asset:
Israeli developments
in air- to-ground warfare
were integrated into allied bombing against Iraqi missile sites and other
targets;
Israeli-designed conformal
fuel tanks for F-15 fighter-bombers greatly enhanced their range;
Israeli-provided mine
plows were used during the
final assaults on Iraqi positions; Israeli mobile bridges were used by U.S.
Marines; Israeli
targeting systems and
low-altitude warning devices were utilized by American helicopters; and Israel
developed key
components for the widely
used Tomahawk missiles. It served as yet another reminder of how Israel
remains, in the
eyes of American policy
makers, an important strategic ally. Given that continued U.S. support of
Israel--despite its
ongoing and, indeed,
worsening repression of the Palestinians--did not interfere with an
unprecedented degree of
cooperation with Egypt and
the Gulf monarchies or with rapprochement with Syria, few risks seemed to be
involved in
continuing such an
alliance.
With the weakening of the
intifada, the triumph by the United States and its allied pro-Western
monarchies in the Gulf
War, and the election of a
more moderate--and thereby less provocative--government in Israel, the odds of
major
political instability
resulting from unconditional support of Israel decreased. As a result, the
United States felt more
confident in its
unqualified backing of Israeli policies and increasing still further the level
of aid, particularly when Bill
Clinton assumed office in
1993.
CLINTON AND U.S. AID
Under the Clinton
administration, the strategic relationship has been strengthened still further.
This is in part because
Israel's role as a
surrogate for U.S. strategic interests has never been limited to concerns over
Soviet influence. As in
many other parts of the
Third World, the Cold War was more the excuse than the actual reason for U.S.
concerns over
instability and challenges
to U.S. economic and political hegemony. Indeed, radical nationalism and, more
recently,
extremist Islamic forces
have been seen by American policy makers as at least as threatening to American
interests in
the region as was
communism, and Israeli support in challenging such perceived threats to
American hegemony has
always been, and will
continue to be, quite welcome.
Clinton's attitude towards
the controversial $10 billion loan guarantee is revealing. During the 1992
campaign, Clinton
attacked Bush from the
right, criticizing the incumbent's insistence that the loan guarantee be linked
to curbing the
Israeli settlements in the
occupied territories or that it be withheld until after the Israeli elections
in June, a position
which many Israelis
interpreted as Clinton's endorsement of the Likud. Feeling heat from Clinton,
by this point the
Democratic presidential
nominee, Bush approved the loans in August, despite a lack of Israeli assurance
that they
would halt settlement
activity. Though Clinton claimed that the loans would be used for housing for
Jewish
immigrants, none of the
money was used for such purposes; indeed, Israel had thousands of unoccupied
housing
units, particularly in
Beersheva, where most refugees were initially settled. The Israeli government
acknowledged that
the loans were more of a
cushion than anything vital to the economy.
Congress attached a
provision requiring the president to deduct the costs of additional settlement
activity from the $2
billion annual installment
of the loan. In October 1993, the United States officially announced to Israel
that there
would be a $437 million
deduction in the next year's loan due to settlement construction during the
1993 fiscal year.
However, State Department
Middle East peace-talks coordinator Dennis Ross immediately let the Israeli
government
know that the United
States would find a way to restore the full funding. Within a month, Clinton
authorized Israel to
draw an additional $500
million in U.S. military supplies from NATO warehouses in Europe. A similar
scenario unfolded
the following year: after
deducting $311.8 million on settlements from 1995 loans, Clinton authorized
$95.8 million for
redeploying troops from
Gaza and $240 million to facilitate withdrawal from West Bank cities, based on
the highly
controversial assertion
that it cost more to withdraw troops than to maintain them in hostile urban
areas.
Indeed, Clinton has
explicitly promised the Israelis that aid would remain constant regardless of
Israeli settlement
policies. What has
resulted, then, is that the United States is now effectively subsidizing the
settlements directly,
since the Israelis know
they will be compensated for every dollar (and more) that they contribute to
maintaining their
presence in the West Bank,
despite the fact that all of those settlements are illegal, according to
Article 49 of the
Geneva Convention, which
bans occupying powers from transferring parts of their own civilian population
into territory
taken by military force.
This conversion from loa guarantees to grants results in what amounts to a
direct subsidy for
Israeli settlement
activity. U.N. Security Council Resolution 446, adopted unanimously with U.S.
support, specifically
requires Israel to
withdraw from those settlements unconditionally, while Resolution 465 forbids
any country from
supporting Israel's
colonization drive. Using U.S. aid to undermine U.N. Security Council
resolutions is in sharp contrast
to the U.S. insistence
that the international community maintain strict sanctions against Arab states
such as Iraq,
Libya and Sudan for their
violations of other U.N. resolutions.
Republicans in Congress,
despite their fiscal conservatism and opposition to most other forms of foreign
aid, are
similarly munificent
regarding aid to Israel. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) has been a
longstanding supporter of
unconditional aid to
Israel; indeed, his wife Marianne earns $2500 per month plus commissions from a
corporation to
lobby U.S. companies to
invest in Israel. Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Jesse Helms
(R-NC) insists
that cutting U.S. aid to
Israel is "off the table," and former Senate majority leader Bob Dole
has also opposed any aid
cutbacks.
ARMS TRANSFERS CONTINUE
Contrary to many
predictions, the end of the Cold War and early advances in the Middle East
peace process have not
lessened U.S. military and
economic aid to Israel. It is higher now than 20 years ago, when Egypt's
massive and
well-equipped armed forces
threatened war, when Syria's military was expanding rapidly with advanced
Soviet
weaponry, when armed
factions of the PLO were launching terrorist attacks into Israel, when Jordan
still claimed the
West Bank and stationed
large numbers of troops along its lengthy border and demarcation line with
Israel, and when
Iraq was embarking upon a
vast militarization program. Now, given a longstanding peace treaty with Egypt
and a large
demilitarized and
internationally monitored buffer zone; given ongoing peace talks with a
gradually demilitarizing Syria
weakened by the collapse
of its Soviet patron; given the PLO's close cooperation with Israeli security;
given Jordan's
having signed a peace
treaty fully normalizing relations; and given the weakness of Iraq's armed
forces, devastated
during the Gulf War and
under strict international sanctions and monitoring, why do such high levels of
aid continue?
Matti Peled, the late
Israeli major general and Knesset member, reported that as far as he could
tell, the $1.8 billion
figure for annual military
support was arrived at "out of thin air." Such a figure is far more
than Israel needs to
replenish stocks, is not
apparently related directly to any specific security requirements, and has
remained relatively
constant in recent years,
thereby reenforcing the impression that it is little more than a U.S.
government subsidy for
American arms
manufacturers. This benefit to American defense contractors is multiplied by
the fact that every major
arms transfer to Israel
creates a new demand by Arab states--most of which can pay hard currency
through
petrodollars--for
additional American weapons to challenge Israel. Indeed, Israel announced its
acceptance of a Middle
Eastern arms freeze in
1991, but the United States effectively blocked it.
In 1993, when 78 Senators
wrote President Clinton insisting that aid to Israel be continued at the
current levels, they
justified it on the
grounds of massive arms procurement by Arabs states, neglecting to note that 80
percent of those
arms transfers were of
U.S. origin. Had they really been concerned about Israeli security, they would
have voted to
block these arms transfers
to the Gulf monarchies. Yet this was clearly not the purpose. Even Israel did
not actively
oppose the sale of 72
highly sophisticated F-15E jet fighters to Saudi Arabia in 1992, since the Bush
administration
offered yet another
increase in U.S. arms transfers to Israel in return for Israeli acquiescence.
In many respects, U.S. aid
policy nicely serves the interests of both sides. Israel, Saudi Arabia and the
United States
all share an interest in
curbing radical nationalism and preserving the regional status quo--if deemed
necessary, by
military force. In
addition, for the Israelis, Arab militarism serves as an excuse for continued
repression in the
occupied territories and
resistance to demands for territorial compromise. For autocratic Arab leaders,
Israeli military
power serves as an excuse
for their lack of internal democracy and inability to address badly needed
social and
economic reforms. It is
noteworthy that for many years before 1993, the United States was sending
billions of dollars
to Gulf states, which took
a harder line towards Israel than the PLO did, while at the same time refusing
to even talk
with the Palestinians.
The resulting arms race
has been a bonanza for U.S. weapons manufacturers, which may actually be a
major
explanation for U.S. aid
policy. For while the pro-Israel political action committees (PACs) certainly
wield substantial
clout with their
contributions to congressional candidates supportive of large-scale military
and economic aid to Israel,
the Aerospace Industry
Association--which promotes massive arms transfers to the Middle East and
elsewhere--is even
more influential, contributing
more than $7.4 million in each of the most recent two election cycles, and
provides the
additional inducement of
creating jobs and bringing federal dollars into key states and congressional
districts. Indeed,
the Clinton administration
has showed no qualms about continued aid to Morocco, despite its ongoing
occupation of
Western Sahara, and to
Indonesia, despite its continuing occupation of East Timor. Like Israel, these
U.S. allies, all
serious human-rights
violators, continue to occupy neighboring states in defiance of U.N. Security
Council resolutions,
yet the Clinton
administration--like its predecessors--has rejected linking aid to these
countries to their compliance
with international norms,
even without the support of a strong domestic lobby.
IMPACT OF AID TO ISRAEL
Arguably, the large
amounts of U.S. aid to the Israeli government have not been as beneficial to
Israel as many would
suspect. Most of the
economic assistance has gone primarily to finance non-productive sectors such
as settlements
and the military, as well
as to finance loan repayments to American banks. Indeed, each fiscal year since
1974,
approximately $1 billion
of Israel's $1.2 billion in Economic Support Funds has been used to cover the
interest and
principal due on previous U.S.
loans that were made primarily to finance arms purchases from the United
States. In
addition, the $1.8 billion
in annual military aid is in fact simply a credit line to American arms
manufacturers and
actually ends up costing
Israel two to three times that amount in training, staffing and maintenance,
procurement of
spare parts, and other
related expenditures. The overall impact is to increase Israeli economic and
military dependency
on the United States and
to drain Israel's fragile economy, taking money away from Israel's
once-generous social
welfare system.
Ezra Sohar has observed
how, unlike borrowing money to build a factory, borrowing for armaments does
not produce
profits or create the
ripple effect or ancillary industries that strengthen the overall economy.
Until the 1967 war, when
Israeli military spending
averaged a little over 8 percent of the GNP, Israel's annual growth rate was a
healthy 9
percent. When military
spending dramatically escalated with an enormous increase in procurement of U.S.
weapons, at
times reaching as much as
35 percent of GNP, the economy faltered. Currently, military spending is
slightly under 20
percent of the GNP, and
the economy is still struggling.
Some critics from the
right, particularly those calling for a liberalization of the Israeli economy,
have started calling for
the reduction or
elimination of economic aid. Arnon Gafny, the former governor of the Bank of
Israel, argues that U.S.
aid has impaired the
country's long-term competitiveness. Similarly, Moshe Syrquin of Bar-Ilan
University notes how
the Israeli economy went
downhill with the dramatic upsurge of U.S. aid in the early 1970s. Even the
selling of Israeli
bonds is now questioned:
According to Joel Bainerman, editor of Tel Aviv Business, the slogan, "Investing
in Israel's
Future," should be
replaced by "building a bigger debt for Israel." Including interest,
the Israeli government currently
owes bondholders $6
billion; interest rates are well above similar bonds in the United States. As a
result, fewer bonds
are purchased by committed
Zionists, and increasing amounts are bought up by international banks,
financial
institutions, pension
funds, and state and local government agencies in the United States.
Bainerman further writes,
"The end of foreign aid would not only improve the chances of reforming
Israel's
over-centralized economy,
in which subsidies play an important part, but increase the chances for
political reform as
well." In the United
States, such sentiment is not only echoed among traditional conservative
critics of Israel; even
the staunchly pro-Israeli
New Republic has cited how U.S. aid has "retarded free enterprise by
supporting subsidies
and monopolies for favored
constituencies."
Some left-wing Israelis
argue just the opposite: that the United States is using its aid weapon to
pressure the Israeli
government to weaken the
Histradut (Israel's powerful trade-union federation), privatize
state-controlled enterprises,
cut social services and
lower taxes. Such economic restructuring has been a requirement for U.S.-backed
loans to a
number of countries as a
means of creating a more favorable climate for U.S. investment, so it should
not be
surprising for Israel to
be held to such standards as well. Indeed, State Department officials admit
that U.S. aid is
used as leverage to
encourage greater privatization and that U.S. officials routinely give advice
on long-term
macro-economic planning.
Yet the dissent from the
left regarding U.S. aid goes far deeper. First of all, the failure of the
United States to use aid
as leverage is seen as
effectively sabotaging the efforts of peace activists in Israel to change
Israeli policy, a policy
which Peled referred to as
pushing Israel "toward a posture of callous intransigence." In the
Israeli press, one can find
comments like those in
Yediot Ahronot which describe their country as "the Godfather's
messenger," since Israel
undertakes the "dirty
work" of the Godfather, who "always tries to appear to be the owner
of some large, respectable
business." Israeli
satirist B. Michael describes U.S. aid to Israel as a situation in which
"My master gives me food to
eat and I bite those whom
he tells me to bite. It's called strategic cooperation."
A number of Israelis and
other left-wing Zionists argue that, like any other nationalist movement,
Zionism has its
pluralist, democratic and
inclusivist elements alongside reactionary, chauvinistic and militarist
elements. The primary
reason the latter have
dominated, they argue, is not anything inherent in Zionism, but the blank check
offered by the
United States that
encourages Israeli oppression of its Middle Eastern neighbors and close ties
with the West,
undermining the last
vestiges of Labor Zionism's commitment to socialism, non-alignment and
cooperation with the
Third World. As former
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger put it, "Israel's obstinacy...serves
the purposes of both our
countries best." The
rise of the Likud bloc in Israel from a minority faction to the dominant party,
as well as the
rightward drift of the
Labor party, is in large part due to this large-scale American support. No
parties with those kinds
of policies could last
very long in office, given the self-defeating effect of such militarization on
economic grounds or in
terms of international
isolation, were they not supported to such a degree that they did not have to
worry about the
consequences of their
policies on their own population.
These left-wing critics
fear that Israel's dependence on what is seen by many as an imperialist power
like the United
States alienates Israel's
potential allies in the Third World and leaves Israel vulnerable to the whims
of U.S. foreign
policy. Indeed, some go as
far as to argue that Israel is being set up to be the scapegoat for U.S. policy
in the region,
much as the Jews of Europe
were set up as tax collectors, money lenders and other positions leaving them
vulnerable
to popular reaction.
DISSENT IN THE U.S.
U.S. aid to Israel, like
most foreign aid, is not popular with the American public. According to a 1994
poll by the
Wirthlin Group, a majority
of Americans favored a phase out of aid to Israel by 1998. In another question,
one-third of
those polled called for an
immediate phase out of aid, a slightly larger number called for a reduction and
only 18
percent supported current
levels. Foreign aid is generally unpopular with the American public,
particularly among
conservatives who are
suspicious of internationalism in general and advocate a more isolationist
foreign policy. Yet it
has traditionally been the
American left that has raised these issues and forced them into the national
debate, most
prominently regarding
Central America, but in other Third World regions as well.
However, the American
left, even among those concerned with issues of peace and justice in the Middle
East, are
divided over the question
of aid. Historically, countries that invade and occupy the territory of their
neighbors, engage
in systematic human-rights
violations, refuse to recognize the national rights of a people that it exiles
and continually
subjugates, use American
weapons against civilian targets, arm and train death squads, ignore U.N.
resolutions, and
systematically flaunt
international legal conventions, are the targets of American peace activists.
Yet, just as with the
tendency by some on the right to single out Israel for criticism, there is a
tendency on the left to
single out Israel for
immunity from criticism. One resulting problem is the failure of peace and
human-rights activists
to aggressively challenge
assistance to the Israeli government on grounds of human rights and
international law.
Consequently, some of the
more prominent groups challenging U.S. aid to Israel are those that fail to
take similar
positions vis-…-vis Arab
regimes with human-rights records as bad or worse than Israel's. Such
double-standards leave
these groups open to
charges of antisemitism, which is not helped by their occasional appeals to
nativist sentiments
that indeed sometimes
contain antisemitic overtones.
One outcome of continued
high levels of unconditional aid to Israel is that it hampers congressional
efforts to curb
U.S. military aid to
repressive regimes elsewhere. Efforts to pass legislation that would restrict
aid systematically to
countries that refuse to
sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or engage in certain violations of
international law
have been blocked solely
because the provisions of the bill would include Israel.
It is doubtful that Israel
could afford the heavy economic burden of continuing their occupation of
neighboring Arab
lands, such as the costs
of maintaining the military forces in the territories, the construction of
illegal settlements,
and the expanded
infrastructure to bypass autonomous Palestinian population centers, without
U.S. financial support.
Another problem is that
the increasingly interlocked military-industrial complexes of the two nations
have furthered
the questionable
projection of U.S. military power into other conflict-ridden areas: For
example, back in the 1980s
when the American peace
movement had mobilized public opinion in the United States to levels which
prohibited direct
U.S. military assistance
to Guatemala, South Africa, Iran and the Contras, the United States simply
armed these
countries through Israel.
Yet virtually no leading
political figures, outside of some right-wing isolationists like Patrick
Buchanan, have publicly
questioned these ongoing
high levels of U.S. aid to Israel. Most prominent liberal Democrats, who have
raised
questions about U.S. aid
to repressive regimes elsewhere, have categorically rejected linking aid to
Israeli compliance
with international law and
human rights. While the role of the pro-Israel lobby is often exaggerated as
the
determining factor in the
overall thrust of U.S. Middle East policy, there is little question that it has
effectively
neutralized liberal
opposition on Capitol Hill. Yet congressional liberals have not had to endure
much pressure from the
other direction: most
liberal lobbying groups have avoided addressing the Middle East altogether.
Indeed, most organized
peace and human-rights groups have been unusually silent regarding U.S. aid to
Israel. This
derives in part to the
fact that, while most strategic analysts recognize that Israel is not under
immediate military
threat, there is still a
widespread perception that Israel is under siege. As a result, those who oppose
military aid to
Israel are easily depicted
as advocating the destruction of the Jewish state and are thus relegated to the
fringe of
U.S. public opinion along
with anti-Jewish bigots. Consequently, there is virtually no chance that the
U.S. government
will consider a cessation
or reduction in military aid to Israel in the foreseeable future. Therefore,
many peace and
human-rights groups argue
that they should focus their energy on more immediately attainable goals, such
as the
ongoing peace process and
an Israeli freeze on expanding settlements in the occupied territories, and not
risk losing
their political
credibility on the aid issue. Furthermore, those opposing emphasis on the aid
question believe that it
raises an unnecessarily
divisive issue at a time when there is a pressing need to reach out to those
with a more
mainstream political
perspective in both the Jewish community and elsewhere, particularly since
opposing military aid
to Israel will inevitably
be depicted as putting Israel's survival at risk and thus alienate many
potential allies.
Even if such a movement to
cut U.S. aid were successful, so this argument goes, it might make matters
worse. Such a
cutoff might cause the
Israeli public, increasingly open to the idea of granting the Palestinians
partial rights, to close
ranks behind right-wing
politicians and destroy the peace process. Many Israelis would see such a move
as
abandonment and betrayal
that would reinforce feelings of isolation and persecution built over
centuries. According to
this argument, this would
not encourage necessary compromise but would lead to even more reckless
behavior by the
Israeli military. Such
concerns have led many Israelis on the left, including most of the recognized
leadership of the
Peace Now movement, to
oppose any threatened cutoff or reduction in U.S. aid.
Those peace activists
advocating this more cautious approach point out that many critics of Israeli
policies do not
share such universal
principles, and use Israeli violations of human rights and international law as
an excuse for
attacking the world's only
Jewish state. While such people are certainly a minority among those critical
of U.S. policy
in the Middle East, it
reinforces a widespread assumption that any criticism of U.S. support of the
Israeli government
carries just such a hidden
agenda. For this reason, many who support a two-state solution and a more
even-handed
U.S. policy believe that a
confrontational approach is counter productive, that there should be no threats
of a reduction
of aid and that any
criticism of the Israeli government should be kept private. While critics of
this approach note its
similarity with the Reagan
and Bush administrations' "quiet diplomacy" toward Latin American
dictatorships and
"constructive
engagement" towards South Africa, its defenders observe that Israel's
isolation and the Jews' history of
persecution dictates such
a cautious strategy.. Indeed, Americans for Peace Now, one of the few American
Jewish
groups to openly challenge
the Likud government's policies, argues that U.S. aid to Israel should be kept
at current
levels to maintain the
"strong and prosperous Israel necessary to make peace."
IMPACT ON THE PEACE
PROCESS
Aid to Israel,
particularly in recent years, has been justified as necessary to support the
peace process. However, as
the noted authority on
negotiations Roger Fisher has observed, one must apply both a carrot and a
stick to convince a
party to make the
compromises necessary in diplomacy. Using either one alone denies the party you
are trying to
influence any incentive.
Yet, the United States has used the carrot with Israel almost exclusively. With
repeated public
pronouncements by U.S.
officials that aid to Israel is unconditional, Israel has no incentive to make
the necessary
concessions that could
lead to peace, or even to end its human-rights abuses and violations of
international law. As
former Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger once told a colleague, "I ask Rabin to make concessions,
and he says he
can't because Israel is
weak. So I give him more arms, and he say he doesn't need to make concessions
because
Israel is strong."
This stands in contrast to
the frequent use of aid as leverage to Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and other Arab
states, as well
as the Palestinian
authority.
Yet, as this article has
shown, it has long been in the U.S. interest to maintain a militarily powerful
and belligerent
Israel dependent upon the
United States. Real peace could undermine such a relationship. The United
States therefore
has pursued a policy of
Pax Americana, one that might bring greater stability to the region while
falling short of real
peace. The Camp David
agreement was a prime example, in that it more closely resembled a tripartite
military pact
that a true peace treaty,
promising more than $5 billion of additional weaponry and economic assistance
to both
countries and closer
American strategic cooperation. The United States refused to follow through on
provisions of the
agreement calling for
Palestinian autonomy, increasing aid to Israel even as Jewish colonization and
anti-Palestinian
repression in the
territories greatly increased. Indeed, this aid package was supposed a one-time
loan, but has since
evolved into an annual
grant that now takes up the majority of the U.S. foreign-aid budget.
The ability of those in
the United States and Israel who oppose large-scale and unconditional aid to
Israel will perhaps
determine the fate of the
peace process. Currently, those who support the status quo--American and
Israeli military
and political officials,
American supporters of the Israeli government and U.S. arms
manufacturers--exercise enormous
political power. Indeed,
despite some of the opinions of critics cited in this article, there has been
virtually no debate
on a national scale in
either country about the risks inherent in the U.S.-Israel relationship.
The result could be
tragic, not just for the Palestinians, Lebanese and others who are the
immediate victims of the
largess of American aid to
Israel, but ultimately for Israel itself. Like El Salvador and South Vietnam,
Israel has
become a client state
whose leadership has made common cause with U.S. global designs in ways that
could
ultimately create
considerable damage. Israeli leaders and their counterparts in many American
Zionist organizations
have been repeating the
historical error of pursuing short-term benefits for their people over
long-term security. For
Israel's economic and
military security ultimately lie not in the amount of economic and military aid
it receives from
the United States, but in
Israel's willingness to recognize Palestinian statehood, share Jerusalem and
withdraw from
all occupied
territories--in short, to make peace with its neighbors.
1Congressional Research
Service, "Israel: U.S. Foreign Assistance, August 30, 1995, compiled by
Clyde Mark. This
amount is higher than even
that of the frequently cited Soviet aid to Cuba in the thirty years prior to
1991.
2Martha Wenger, "U.S.
Aid to Israel: From Handshake to Embrace," Middle East Report, May-August
1990.
3The breakdown of grant
aid over the official $3 billion is as follows: bank charges incurred by U.S.
government for
lump-sum withdrawal ($60
million); interest earned by Israel on ESF aid money reinvested in U.S.
treasury notes ($90
million); supplemental
State-Department-funded aid ($93.5 million); supplemental Defense Department
items ($242.3
million); a contract with
the Immigration and Naturalization Service ($17 million); assistance from the
Commerce
Department ($2.5 million)
["House Appropriations Committee Funds U.S.-Israeli Cooperation,"
Near East Report, Vol.
XXXIX, No. 18, August 14,
1995, p. 99 and Shawn Twing, "A Comprehensive Guide to U.S. Aid to
Israel," Washington
Report on Middle East
Affairs" April 1996, p. 7].
4In other countries that
receive U.S. economic aid, there is an AID mission as part of the U.S. embassy
that audits all
relevant expenditures.
Without such oversight in Israel, there have been a number of scandals
involving U.S. funds,
such as when General
Electric's manager for Israel was caught paying kickbacks to Israeli
authorities responsible for
procurement, or when
General Rami Dotan was found to be siphoning off U.S. funds for his personal
use.
5Figures cited in Edward
T. Pound, "A Close Look at U.S. Aid to Israel Reveals Deals That Push Cost
Above Publicly
Quoted Figures," The
Wall Street Journal, September 19, 1991, p. A16.
6Martha Wenger, "The
Money Tree: US Aid to Israel", Middle East Report, May-August 1990, p. 12.
7Ibid.
8Background briefing,
Department of State, March 26, 1996
9Cited in Joel Bainerman,
"Looking the Gift Horse in the Mouth: Israelis Ask If U.S. Generosity
Might Actually Be
Hurting Their
Country," The Washington Post, October 29, 1995, p.64. to Text
10This commitment to
Israeli superiority is often cast in terms of compensating for the superior
numerical strength of
the combined forces of
neighboring Arab states. However, not only are Israeli forces far better
trained and more
mobile, but the idea of
large numbers of Arab states uniting to destroy Israel at this point is highly
questionable at
best.
11Karen L. Puschel,
U.S.-Israeli Strategic Cooperation in the Post-Cold War Era: An American
Perspective (Boulder:
Westview Press) 1993, p. 150.
12Glenn Frankel,
Washington Post, November 19, 1986.
13Cited in Stephen Green,
Taking Sides: America's Secret Relations With a Militant Israel (Brattleboro,
VT: Amana
Books, 1988) p. 250.
14Also known as the Guam
Doctrine, or "surrogate strategy," where a Third World ally would be
capable of military
intervention on behalf of
the United States, thus minimizing the political risks from direct American
military
intervention. For a
descrption of this policy in relation to the Persian Gulf see Zunes,
"U.S.-GCC: Its Rise and Potential
Fall" in Middle East
Policy, Vol. II; No. 1, 1993, particularly pp. 103-104.
15The chronology of aid
figures is taken from Wenger, op. cit.
16Pound, op. cit.
17Ronald Young, Missed
Opportunities for Peace: U.S. Middle East Policy 1981-1986 (Philadelphia:
American Friends
Service Committee, 1988).
18Interviews at Ben Gurion
University in Beersheva, January 1994. Text
19David Hoffman, The
Washington Post, June 10, 1993.
20Ruth E. Steele,
"Why Republicans Have Put Cuts in Aid to Israel 'Off the Table,'",
Washington Report on Middle East
Affairs, April/May 1995,
p. 41-42.
21Lucille Barnes,
"Once Again, Israel Gets Away With Spending U.S. Aid on Settlements,"
Washington Report on Middle
East Affairs, Oct-Nov
1995.
22Nathan Jones,
"Exempting Israel Makes Foreign Aid Savings Insignificant,"
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs,
March 1995, p. 44.
23Steele, op. cit.
24Interview, Major General
(ret.)Mattityahu Peled, May 12, 1992, Seattle, Washington.
25Alan Kronstadt et al,
Hostile Takeover: How the Aerospace Industries Association Gain Control of
American Foreign
Policy and Double Arms
Transfers to Dictators, (Washington: Project on Demilitarization and Democracy,
1995).
26Joshua Goldstein, PACs
in Profile: Spending Patterns in the 1994 Elections (Washington: Center for
Responsive
Politics, June 1995).
27Twing, op. cit.
28Peled interview.
29It is noteworthy that in
the development of a new anti-missile defense system for Israel, the United
States initially
insisted that it be
mobile, despite the Israeli preference for a cheaper and simpler fixed system,
which would have
been quite adequate for
their small territory.
30Bainerman, op. cit.
31Simcha Bahiri, "A
Peace Economy for Israel, The New Economy, Spring 1995.
32Bainerman, op. cit.
33Ibid.
34Ibid. to Text
35Charles Lane,
"Rabble Rousing: National Insecurity" The New Republic, June 12,
1995.
36Peled interview.
37Department of State, op.
cit. Given that AID support goes directly into the Israeli treasury with few
restrictions, it is
unclear just how this
pressure is applied.
38Matti Peled, New
Outlook, May/June 1975.
39Nathan Shaham, Yediot
Ahronot, November 28, 1996, cited in Noam Chomsky, World Orders Old and New
(New York:
Columbia University Press,
1994), p. 206.
40B. Michael, Haaretz,
November 11, 1983, cited in Ibid.
41For example, see Cherie
Brown, et al, "A Draft Policy on Jewish Liberation," Ruah Hadashah #4
(1981); particularly,
pp. 11-13.
42Henry Kissinger, Years
of Upheaval, (Boston: Little, Brown, Company, 1982), p. 621.
43For example, see Cherie
Brown, op. cit; and Zunes, "Zionism, Anti-Semitism and Imperialism,"
in Peace Review, Vol.
6, No. 1 (Spring 1994)
44Wirthlin group, 95
percent confidence level, polled September 6-8, 1994. 53 percent favored phase
out, 36 percent
opposed, 11 percent did
not know or had no opinion. On the question of amount of aid, 33 percent said
cutoff, 36
percent said reduction, 18
percent favored current levels, 6 percent favored an increase, 6 percent did
not know or had
no opinion. Cited in
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Nov/Dec 1994.
45Zunes, "The Roots
of the U.S.-Israeli Relationship," New Political Science, Spring-Summer
1992, Nos. 21-22.
For similar conclusions,
albeit from a very different perspective, see A.F.K. Organski, The $36 Billion
Bargain: Strategy
and Politics in U.S.
Assistance to Israel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), especially
chapter 3.
46Interview with director
Barry Rubin, April 29, 1996.
47Roger Fisher et al,
Beyond Machiavelli (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994).
48Edward Sheehan, The
Arabs, Israelis and Kissinger: A Secret History of American Diplomacy in the
Middle East (New
York: Readers Digest
Press, 1976), p. 200
FY1949 - FY2000
(millions of dollars)
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