People run for cover as smoke rises from a building destroyed in Israeli airstrike at the Bureij camp for Palestinian refugees in the central Gaza Strip. Photo / AFP
People run for cover as smoke rises from a building destroyed in Israeli airstrike at the Bureij camp for Palestinian refugees in the central Gaza Strip. Photo / AFP
Israel is investing millions of dollars to build more heavy weapons domestically over growing concerns about its dependence on arms imports from the United States and other Western countries – even as the flow of arms from those countries continues mostly unabated.
But experts say that Israel’s reliance on the one country it turns to most for weapons – the United States – would be hard to shake, especially as President-elect Donald Trump returns to office.
In a large sign of its burgeoning domestic ambition, Israel’s Defence Ministry said last week that it had signed deals worth about $275 million ($494m) to produce heavy bombs and raw materials for defence, a major addition to the country’s already sizable arms industry.
“This is a central lesson from the war that will enable the IDF to continue operating powerfully in all theatres,” Defence Ministry Director General Eyal Zamir said at a signing ceremony on Tuesday.
In the war following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, the Israeli military has used heavy bombs, supplied in part by US companies such as Boeing, to level and make uninhabitable much of the Gaza Strip. Those actions have killed more than 40,000 people, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. This destruction has made the munitions a subject of special scrutiny.
Some Western countries have threatened to cut arms exports to Israel, citing potential harm to civilians. In the United States, by far the largest arms supplier to Israel, the Biden administration has received hundreds of reports that US weapons were being used in attacks that posed a risk to civilians in Gaza.
Smoke rises from a building destroyed in Israeli airstrike at the Bureij camp for Palestinian refugees in the central Gaza Strip. Photo / AFP
While the Biden administration has largely kept the weapons flowing – delaying, but not cancelling, some shipments of 2000-pound bombs – Israeli officials reacted with concern, pledging to push forward with what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters a year ago was a plan to “disconnect from dependency on the rest of the world”, thereby reducing any leverage Israel’s allies might choose to wield.
President Joe Biden faced considerable backlash from his own base for continuing to send weapons to Israel, with Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and a small number of Democrats leading multiple attempts to block such sales in November.
Israel’s dependence on the United States had been “underscored by the war and the growing criticism of its use of weaponry by progressive elements in the Democratic Party”, said Efraim Inbar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, an Israeli think tank.
Reliance on US bombs
Amid the war in Gaza and other connected conflicts, business has been booming for Israel’s arms industry, with exports in 2024 widely expected to hit another record. However, the industry often works in high-tech niches such as air defence – made famous by Israel’s Iron Dome and its separate Arrow System.
The company selected last week to produce heavy bombs domestically is Elbit Systems, one of Israel’s big three arms producers, with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Rafael. Slovakia recently agreed to pay $583 million for the Barak MX air defence system, which IAI developed.
Israeli companies have indicated they are ready for the shift.
“Elbit’s employees and managers are committed to meeting the changing needs of the IDF and the defence establishment,” Elbit CEO Bezhalel Machlis said on Tuesday.
Analysts say Israel had chosen to import heavy bombs from the United States – as well as the advanced Joint Direct Attack Munition kits that can be used for precision targeting – primarily for economic reasons rather than technological ones.
“Israel has refrained, until recently, in producing certain munitions primarily because of profit considerations,” Inbar said. “It is cheaper to buy them with the money allocated to Israel by the US.”
The large amount of US military funding to Israel, and the way those funds are channelled, are key factors. The United States has been a major fiscal backer of Israeli defence, with US security assistance to Israel totalling more than US$200 billion ($359b) since the aftermath of World War II, making it the largest recipient of US aid.
Much of this assistance falls under the category of the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) programme, which provides grants that Israel uses to purchase US military goods and services. In the past, Israel had been permitted to spend roughly a quarter of that money on domestic production, a provision the countries agreed in 2016 to phase out.
Companies including Elbit set up US subsidiaries to allow FMF money to continue to flow to them. It is not clear whether a new agreement, which the Trump administration is expected to sign after the current one expires in 2026, would allow FMF money to be spent domestically.
Some analysts doubt that Israeli domestic production of key goods could be accelerated any time soon.
“Even though Elbit would have some experience in this, building production capabilities takes time and lots of funds – just look at the US struggles to increase capacity for globally needed munitions,” said Seth Binder, an expert at the Middle East Democracy Center, a Washington-based human rights group.
Israel would remain reliant on foreign imports for much of its key equipment, including the United States for combat aircraft such as the F-35 and Germany for submarines.
The push to build a raw materials facility also fits into a broader concern about the availability of crucial components for weapons – one shared by many countries, given global shortages in several explosive types, which first became obvious amid the war in Ukraine.
Pieter Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks global armaments, said the deal with Elbit suggested that Israel was importing explosive materials needed for bombs, warheads and missile motors.
“As the pressure increases on states to reconsider the supply of weapons and more important related components to Israel, Israel wants to ensure an even higher level of autonomy,” Wezeman said.
While Trump has positioned himself as a strong supporter of the Israeli Government, the supply of US arms and other funding to Israel could provide important leverage.
That remains a big question, given the President-elect’s repeated statements about the need for a Gaza peace deal. Some former Trump officials say he would be unlikely to do so.
Jason Greenblatt, former Trump White House special envoy to the Middle East, said Trump’s support for Israel had been “unparalleled” and showed an understanding of how Israel’s military prowess enhanced stability for the United States and its allies in the Middle East.
Greenblatt said he did not believe Trump would use weapons shipments or military aid as leverage over Israel to push the country toward peace agreements.
“President Trump knows that peace agreements can only be built with a recognition of reality, and the reality is that even with peace agreements, bad actors and terrorists will always be here,” Greenblatt said.
At the same time, the incoming president may not be keen on increased domestic production of weapons in Israel – especially if the United States ends up footing the bill – said William D. Hartung, an expert on the arms trade at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a US think tank that advocates “diplomacy and restraint”.
“Trump likes to pose as the ultimate dealmaker, and during his first term he touted how US arms sales support jobs in America,” Hartung said. “Letting Israel spend US aid to bolster Israel’s arms sector rather than to buy weapons from US firms runs counter to his usual approach.”
