[WCUSP] FPIF News | Who's Arming Israel?

[C.J. Minster]

>From Odile Hugonot Haber, WCUSP Board Representative.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: IRC <communications at irc-online.org>
Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2006 18:03:43 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [NucNews] FPIF News | Who's Arming Israel?
To: nucnews at yahoogroups.com

New at FPIF

"A think tank without walls"
http://www.fpif.org/

Introducing the latest policy analysis from Foreign Policy In Focus

Who's Arming Israel?
By Frida Berrigan and William D. Hartung

Everyone's talking about the arms suppliers behind Hezbollah. But
who's supplying Israel?

Much has been made in the U.S. media of the Syrian- and Iranian-origin
weaponry used by Hezbollah in the escalating violence in Israel and
Lebanon. There has been no parallel discussion of the origin of
Israel's weaponry, the vast bulk of which is from the United States.

The United States is the primary source of Israel's far superior
arsenal. For more than 30 years, Israel had been the largest recipient
of U.S. foreign assistance and since 1985 Jerusalem has received about
$3 billion in military and economic aid each year from Washington.
U.S. aid accounts for more than 20% of Israel's total defense budget.

Over the past decade, the United States has transferred more than $17
billion in military aid to this country of just under 7 million
people.

Israel is one of the United States' largest arms importers. Between
1996 and 2005 (the last year for which full data is available), Israel
took delivery of $10.19 billion in U.S. weaponry and military
equipment, including more than $8.58 billion through the Foreign
Military Sales program, and another $1.61 billion in Direct Commercial
Sales

During the Bush administration, from 2001 to 2005, Israel received
$10.5 billion in Foreign Military Financing—the Pentagon's biggest
military aid program—and $6.3 billion in U.S. arms deliveries. The aid
figure is larger than the arms transfer figure because it includes
financing for major arms agreements for which the equipment has yet to
be fully delivered. The most prominent of these deals is a $4.5
billion sale of 102 Lockheed Martin F-16s to Israel.

Given the billions of dollars of aid it provides to Israel every year
and the central role of U.S.-supplied weaponry in the Israeli arsenal,
the United States has considerable leverage that it could use to
promote a cease fire in the current conflict between Israel and
Hezbollah before more Israeli and Lebanese civilians are killed and
displaced. President Bush needs to go beyond vague calls for
"restraint" to demands for a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah,
bringing in other key actors in the region, including Iran and Syria.

Click here for the full World Policy Institute report.

International Relations Center (IRC)
http://www.irc-online.org/
Siri D. Khalsa
Outreach Coordinator
Email: communications at irc-online.org
PO Box 2178
Silver City, NM 88062






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C.J. Minster, Program Chair
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
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