A new report says Israel is seeking a 20-year arms agreement with the United States that could include joint research into emerging weapons technology.
According to Axios, Israel’s current agreement that gives it almost $4 billion a year in weapons comes to a close in 2028.
Israel is looking to make a deal to extend that agreement over the next year, with a goal of having an agreement in place that will run through 2048, when Israel will celebrate 100 years of embattled existence.
Israel is looking to increase its annual weapons funding, but recognizes that an increase could be politically complicated given the crosscurrents of American politics.
To sweeten that deal, Israel is offering to take some of the money and use it for joint weapons research projects in areas such as defense technology, the use of artificial intelligence in defense weaponry, and the proposed Golden Dome missile defense project, an Israeli official said.
The concept is to make helping Israel acceptable to “America First” advocates.
“This is out-of-the-box thinking. We want to change the way we handled past agreements and put more emphasis on U.S.-Israel cooperation. The Americans like this idea,” one Israeli official said.
Multi-year deals were signed in 1998 totaling $21.3 billion, 2008 totaling $32 billion, and 2016 totaling $38 billion.
The U.S. has increased that amount when conditions warranted, such as during Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas.
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Officials said the war stalled talks on a new agreement.
Any agreement is likely to face opposition from members of both parties.
Earlier this year, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, took to Facebook to say money should not flow to Israel when it is needed in America.
“The U.S. State Department already gives Nuclear armed Israel over $3 Billion every single year. Nuclear armed Israel has nearly decimated Hamas in Gaza all by themselves. And we just successfully bombed Iran’s and wiped out Iran’s nuclear program for Nuclear armed Israel,” she wrote.
Many left-wing lawmakers, such as Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who recently sought to block about $20 billion in weapons sales to Israel, have long been opposed to military aid to the country.
A report in The Times of Israel put a different spin on Israel’s plans for the future of its weaponry.
“I don’t know what they’re talking about. My direction is the exact opposite,” Prine Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in response to the Axios article.
“I think it’s time to ensure that Israel is independent,” he said. “Understand that our military aid is like a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of what the US spent in Afghanistan or spent in the Middle East. It’s tiny.”
“But I think that we have a very strong economy. We have a very strong arms industry. It’s true that even though we get what we get, which we appreciate, 80 percent of that is spent in the United States. It produces jobs in the United States. But nevertheless, I’d like to see a much more independent Israeli, an even more independent Israeli defense industry,” he said.
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