ISRAEL ARMS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302390016-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 16, 2012
• Sequence Number: 16
• Publication Date: July 9, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/16: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302390016-1
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL.
9 July 1985
ISRAEL ARI`IS
BY DANIEL F. GIUVPE
WASHINGTON
Israel is exporting more than $1 billion a year in arms and military
expertise to more than 100 countries worldwide and the trade accounts for some
20 percent of its total industrial exports, an American-born Israeli author said
Tuesday.
Aaron Klieman, professor of international relations at Tel Aviv University
and now a visiting professor at Georgetown University, said that while Israeli
arms exports are fractional compared to the Soviet Union and the United States,
they are a vital part of its economy and rank high among the increasing number
of Third World arms producers.
Often Israeli arms sales conflict with U.S. or Western policy, he said.
Conversely, Israel is almost entirely dependent on U.S. arms aid and to a lesser
degree for parts and technology for the arms it exports.
The Byzantine world of arms exports and imports is explored in depth in
Klieman's book, 'Israel's Global Reach: Arms Sales as Diplomacy,'' which he
discussed at a news conference.
''Israel is merely an example of more than a dozen countries like Brazil,
India, South Korea, Singapore and South Africa ... attempting to attain a degree
of self-sufficiency and not be dependent on big countries,'' he said.
In the process, he said, Israel became a ''merchant of arms,'' accounting for
some one-fourth of the country's industrial exports as of 1984-1985.
''Barring any unforseen sharp reversal of policy,'' he writes in the book,
''the manufacture and transfer of Israeli arms can be expected to figure
prominently ... as an independent course of diplomacy for the remainder of this
decade and, indeed, well into the 1990s.''
Klieman cited world military expenditures that rose from $600 billion in 1980
to about $970 billion in 1984 and which are projected to pass the
trillion-dollar mark this year.
The ''arms bazaar'' works both ways, Klieman said. ''Israel is hardly alone
in the rush to procure arms. It finds itself in a region several of whose Arab
members consistently lead the list of world weapons importers."
He maintains that after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel branched out from the
export of Uzi submachine guns and small arms to home-built Kfir jet fighters,
with U.S.-supplied or designed engines or components; tanks, missiles, patrol
boats and sophisticated electronics. Israel this year even leased a dozen later
model Kfir jets to the U.S. forces to simulate Soviet MiG fighters in combat
training.
Israeli arms clients are not always on the best of terms with the United
States, Britain or many other countries.
Klieman noted that Israel supplied arms to Argentina during its war with
Britain over the Falklands; sent arms to South Africa until complying with a
U.N. embargo and sold to India during its wars with China and Pakistan.
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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/16: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302390016-1
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/16: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302390016-1
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''Many of its (Israel's) best military clients also happen to be countries or
leaders with serious image problems,'' Klieman acknowleged.
On the other hand, he writes, U.S. military and intelligence officials may be
willing to coopers e or loo the other way in return for Israeli suDoor fi-
American policy.
Klieman cited ''reported efforts by the Reagan administration and especially
the Central Intelligence Agency, to pet Israel to become more active in
overtly and covertly helping to weaken the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and in
backing the Contras.- Israel had started selling arms to Nicaragua as far bjck
as feh 19 s.
He said that in 1983 ''at the request of the United States, Israel agreed to
send weapons captured from the PLO to Honduras for eventual use by Nicaraguan
rebels.''
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/16: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302390016-1