| FACT: Beginning with the 1968 Phantom jet sale, the United States adopted a policy of assuring that Israel would have a qualitative military edge over its neighbors. Ten years later that edge began to erode with the decision of Jimmy Carter to sell advanced fighter planes to Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Since that time, even as the United States has continued to provide Israel with advanced weaponry, its advantage has diminished as successive presidents sold increasingly sophisticated systems to Arab states. Israel has not objected to the sale of arms to Egypt since the Camp David Accords, but the quantity and quality of those sales has become increasingly alarming given that Egypt has consistently directed its war games toward Israel and that President Hosni Mubarak is now in his eighties with no clear successor. While the prospects of a radical change in Egypt's policy toward Israel is currently viewed as unlikely, it cannot be discounted and therefore makes the continued arming of an Egyptian military that faces no external threats a matter of concern. While Egypt has signed a peace treaty with Israel, Saudi Arabia has not. For years, the U.S. secretly armed the Saudis and then began to openly provide the kingdom with more and better weapons. Starting with the 1981 sale of AWACS radar planes, the Saudis began to acquire some of America's most sophisticated weapons sales while at the same time buying advanced systems from countries such as Britain and France. For years the sales to the Saudis were justified on the grounds that they needed them to defend themselves against the Soviet Union. As Henry Kissinger noted, however, it was hypocritical to suggest that the arms could be effective against the Red Army but pose no threat to Israel.358 After 9/11, new sales were rationalized as necessities for fighting the war on terror even though the principal threat against the kingdom was internal and F-15s and other advanced weapons were useless against al-Qaida. Still, the Bush Administration agreed to the sale of even more advanced F-15 fighter-bombers and laser-guided "smart-bombs", advanced anti-ship missiles and electronic hardware for aircraft for Saudi Arabia, as well as Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.359 Few people seriously believe these weapons are needed or would be effective in deterring any external threats. In fact, it was the Saudis' impotence, even after acquiring billions of dollars of arms, that necessitated U.S. forces coming to their rescue in 1991. More recently, arms sales have been made on the pretext of strengthening the Arab states against Iran, which, like Iraq, would have little trouble overrunning its neighbors in the absence of American troops. The trend has been alarming for a number of years and has now reached a point where Israel is seeking new assurances from the United States that the commitment to Israel's qualitative edge remains intact. In September 2009, Defense Minister Ehud Barak visited Washington to discuss the situation and U.S. National Security Advisor James Jones met with Israeli officials in Jerusalem in January 2010 to talk about ensuring Israel's qualitative edge over its Arab neighbors. Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, said that once Israel brought the matter up, the Obama Administration took immediate steps to correct the problem. "They said they are going to deal with this matter and ensure that the qualitative edge of the IDF is preserved," stated Oren. "Since then we have embarked on a dialogue [on preserving the IDF's qualitative edge]."360 |
359Barak Ravid and Aluf Benn, "Bush Sold Arab States Arms in Violation of Deal with Israel," Jerusalem Post, (January 10, 2010).
357Ibid.
