Washington has suspended arms shipments to Israel, a move that never occurred before, despite all the disagreements both within and with Israel. How critical is this for the Israeli army in the context of the major operation in Rafah, which will determine Israel’s future ?
Ahead of the start of a new Israeli army operation in the southern Gaza Strip, it was revealed that Washington postponed the sale of advanced precision weapons to Israel. In particular, the matter concerns the transfer of about 6.5 thousand JDAM kits, which can convert conventional bombs into guided ones. In January, the U.S. Congress was informed of the $260 million deal, but lawmakers never received official notification.
Congressional notification of a $1 billion arms sale to Israel, including tank ammunition, military equipment and mortar shells, has also been stalled since March.
What is really happening with U.S. arms shipments to Israel? How critical is all this to the Israeli army and Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies?
The slowdown in U.S. supplies could well be considered a leverage on Israel or a manifestation of Washington’s dissatisfaction with the way the Israelis are dealing with their own security problems in Gaza. It is also an attempt by the Biden administration to prevent losing the votes of pro-Palestinian constituency.
The Gaza war has shown that the Israeli general concept of achieving military and technical superiority over neighboring countries is highly flawed. Israel and its army have been engaged in self-advertising for decades, which gave rise to the myth of the “most technologically advanced” and “most effective” army in the world. The past year has shown that this is just a mere myth.
The main challenge for the Israeli army is the lack of industrial capacity to produce conventional weapons, which are used up on a massive scale: drones, shells, bombs, small arms. The authorities have not worried much about this due to the belief that all of Israel’s future wars will be fought through the use of high technology: Iron Dome will shoot down all those primitive missiles from the Arabs and Persians, retaliatory strikes with high-precision bombs will stop breakthrough attempts, and then invulnerable Merkava tanks will complete the defeat. As a result, no artillery ammunition had been stockpiled in adequate quantities.
But the war in Gaza took a different turn. “Total war” required a huge amount of ammunition, especially artillery and tank shells, as well as heavy aerial bombs capable of blasting through concrete fortifications.
In addition, the colossal arms depot created by the Pentagon in Israel in 1984 with the aim of participating in a hypothetical major war in the Middle East against the USSR was empty. In 2022, the last 300,000 155-mm artillery shells were taken away for Ukraine, which strained the Israeli government’s relations with Kyiv.
Israel became the first country in the world to use fifth-generation F-35 fighter jets in combat. In Gaza, they are used as platforms for heavy bombs, though they have not participated in aerial combat.
In addition, Israel is a major arms exporter itself. A major deal was struck last September, just before the conflict escalated. Germany bought Arrow 3 anti-missile system, designed to intercept long-range ballistic missiles, for $3.5 billion. It turns out that there is something to sell, but Israel lacks the capacity and funds to provide its own army.
This is due to the fact that the strategy for the destruction of Gaza requires the use of not “high-tech” but “ordinary” shells, which are now in short supply in Israel. However, the shortage of shells and components for their production is unlikely to slow down the Rafah offensive.
Yet it will create a problem for the future, because the Israeli military industry will have to restructure itself to produce conventional weapons at the expense of exporting high-tech stuff, and for that there are no funds, no facilities, and not even the labor force. Military spending will rise, no matter how quickly and to what extent military cooperation with the U.S. is restored, and export revenues will fall sharply.
This would be a completely different story for Israel, which has been enjoying relatively comfortable circumstances since the mid-1980s, allowing it to dabble in what it calls prospective weapons without asking for much in return. Similarly, Ukraine could a decade ago afford to peddle old Soviet weapons around the world, which are now in acute scarcity.
In general, it turns out that Israel, like Ukraine and Taiwan, will not survive without outside support. That means it is time for American and European taxpayers to prepare for additional expenditures.
