Afrasianet - Ibrahim Nawar - Donald Trump has proven to be the only person in the world, with the exception of Sara Netanyahu, who can put pressure on the Israeli prime minister.
Trump told an Axios reporter in Washington last Friday that Netanyahu "had no choice but to agree with him" when they discussed the position on Hamas and the need to stop the war.
The Trump plan also proved once again that "the United States has 99 percent of the political playing cards in the Middle East," despite the ebb and flow of U.S. policy in the Middle East over the past half-century.
It seems that the preference of the United States over Israel is the secret behind this American centralism in the Middle East. There is no doubt that there are many factors and elements that fuel both Israeli-American relations and the centrality of the American role in the conflicts of the Middle East. One of these elements is the organic military relations between the manufacturer and the manufacturer (despite their attempts to get out of control)!
Netanyahu's talk about the "need to achieve self-sufficiency" may have reflected a strong desire to liberate Israel's arms industry from the dominance of the U.S. military industry, and this desire should cause concern for the region's major Arab states.
The United States played a crucial role in encouraging Israel to continue its war of extermination against the Palestinian people, no different from the Democrats under Biden or the Republicans under Trump. This role had three facets: military, financial, and diplomatic.
The Trump administration in particular deserved to be considered by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu as the best cooperative administration in U.S. history, standing behind Israel with all its might inherited from World War II, and even stepping ahead of it on the path of a war of extermination by proposing the displacement of the Palestinian people from Gaza to other parts of the world.
Although Trump's current plan includes stopping the war and forced displacement without addressing the criteria and conditions that would ensure this happens, the role of the United States is Israel's supply of weapons, information, and organization to kill, starve, and displace Palestinians will forever be etched in black letters throughout history.
The Trump plan effectively deprives the Palestinians of the right to establish their own independent state, but this plan will not necessarily succeed in achieving that goal as long as the resistance remains, and the will to stand up for the right to an independent homeland with dignity, sovereignty and freedom of will continues.
Suffice it to say here that the United States funded Israel with all the costs of the Gaza war, and deprived the Palestinians of their rights to international aid through United Nations organizations when it decided to refrain from paying its contribution to organizations that provide assistance to the Palestinian people in their historic resilience, such as UNRWA, the World Health Organization and UNESCO.
The starvation war was practically being waged under the unofficial leadership of the United States through the Gaza Relief Foundation, which is run mainly by officials who had previously served in the U.S. military.
The United States has also been making a desperate effort to persuade countries around the world to accept the settlement of a number of Palestinians forcibly displaced from their lands. In this context, the U.S. Congress has played the role of a faithful legislator in defending Israel's interests through its various committees.
Financing arms deals
Based on U.S. congressional resolutions and reports from reputable think tanks such as the Sipri Institute for Peace Studies in Stockholm, the United States has provided Israel with direct military assistance worth at least $27.5 billion since the beginning of the genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza, which can be documented according to memorandums of understanding, agreements, and announced deals.
This direct military assistance does not include the cost of a U.S. military effort to protect Israel, such as the deployment of additional U.S. fleets and forces in the Middle East, and the regional defense arrangements for Israel by the forces of U.S. Central Command, Air Command, and the Fifth Fleet, which is based in Bahrain. The role of the Central Military Command includes operating the air missile defense system in the Middle East, particularly against Yemen, Iran, and Iraq.
Military assistance includes allowing Israel to withdraw weapons from the U.S. strategic stockpile in Israel. The withdrawal from that stockpile is used to compensate for Israeli weapons and munitions that are lost or consumed and put out of service quickly and without waiting for those weapons to be shipped from the United States.
Direct military aid can be divided into two parts: the first is the aid that Israel receives in accordance with long-term agreements, under the Qualitative Military Edge Act, and the second is emergency military aid.
The term "Qualitative Military Superiority Act" refers to law-force norms that obligate the executive branch (the president, the secretaries of defense, foreign affairs, and the treasury) that certain U.S. arms sales to countries in the Middle East do not adversely affect Israel's military superiority.
The law has been a key element of the United States' longstanding commitment to Israel's security, since the deal for U.S. AWACS to Saudi Arabia that Israel objected to during President Ronald Reagan's administration in the 1980s, but was passed with a U.S. military pledge to maintain Israel's superiority over the countries of the region.
This pledge was made in the form of a 2008 law that is confirmed almost every year by new U.S. legislation, especially in times of regional tension. Qualitative military superiority ensures "Israel's ability to confront and defeat any credible conventional military threat, while sustaining minimal damage and casualties, by taking the war to the adversary's arena" using superior military technology and capabilities.
Therefore, US arms sales to other countries in the Middle East require a prior study to assess the potential impact on Israel's qualitative military superiority, and it is not permissible for Congress to vote to approve the sale of weapons more advanced than Israel's, because such a vote is contrary to the Maintaining Qualitative Superiority Act.
In this context, Washington is committed to providing Israel with highly advanced military technology, often selling it to it before offering it to other countries in the region.
The F-35 fighter jet is a prime example of this. The United States is also committed to developing joint programs to produce advanced military equipment with Israel, especially in the field of missile defense, such as the Heitz, Iron Dome, and Arrow systems.
The United States has allocated a separate budget of $500 million per year, along with military aid linked to long-term agreements currently amounting to $3.3 billion per year and emergency aid. The latter agreement covers the time period from 2019 to 2028.
Preparations began early to outline a new ten-year agreement, which includes two streams of flows, one for weapons and defence equipment and the other for associated financial flows.
Exceptional War Funding
Funding for military supplies currently depends on the 2016 memorandum of understanding between the Obama administration and the Israeli government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu at the time. It was reached to buy the consent of Israel and the Zionist lobby in the United States, following the signing of the nuclear deal between major world powers and Iran the previous year.
Under the MoU, Israel will receive $38 billion in military aid, representing the minimum necessary $3.8 billion annually over a ten-year period. In response to Israel's requests for increased military assistance as the war of genocide against the Palestinian people exploded, the U.S. Congress approved additional military assistance beyond what was stipulated in the Memorandum of Understanding.
Assistance in fiscal year 2024 included an additional $4 billion in funding for missile defense, $1.2 billion for the development of the Iron Dome system and its transition from rocket to laser beams, in addition to the assistance provided for in the memorandum of understanding and other assistance.
A review of congressional resolutions on funding military aid to Israel since October 7 found that total military aid through 2024 is at least $17.9 billion.
The government has asked the Israeli Ministry of Finance to allocate sufficient funding for a military budget to fully rearm the IDF after the Gaza war, amounting to nearly $50 billion, including doubling air power, developing rocket power, and expanding the reliance on artificial intelligence in both espionage and military operations. and the introduction of new weapons. The R&D program alone has nearly $9 billion in funding.
US military aid to Israel has evolved in recent years, rising from $3.8 billion in 2021 to $4.8 billion in 2022, an increase of 26.3 percent, as US military funding to Israel has included a significant increase in allocations for the missile defense program.
In 2023, Israel's military funding was not affected much by the usual annual level because the war occurred at the end of the fiscal year, but in 2024 it jumped to $12.5 billion, an increase of nearly 230 percent.
This year, the U.S. State Department informed Congress in February that it would provide Israel with a $7.4 billion military aid package in addition to the original $3.8 billion in aid stipulated in the current memorandum of understanding Dollar.
That is, what can be documented for this year is at least $11.2 billion by the end of the first quarter. Consultations are currently underway to increase direct military aid, possibly by an additional $6 billion, with the Wall Street Journal reporting that the White House is seeking congressional approval for arms sales to Israel worth nearly $6 billion.
The proposed arms package includes $3.8 billion for the purchase of 30 AH-64 Apache helicopters , which would double Israel's fleet of these aircraft, as well as 3,250 infantry attack vehicles worth $1.9 billion. The weapons will be delivered to Israel within the next two to three years.
If Congress approves the proposed $6 billion deal, the value of direct military aid funding in the period from 2023 to now will be about $33.5 billion.
This amount covers nearly two-thirds of the cost of Israel's war of extermination against the Palestinians, equivalent to 6.2 percent of Israel's GDP. Aside from this deal, U.S. military aid as of last April covered more than 50 percent of the cost of the war.
The Economic Cost of War
The economic cost of war includes direct military and defense spending, including the cost of mobilization, equipment, ammunition, and the cost of managing troops. Indirect costs include loss of production (e.g., reservists out of work), unrest in conflict-affected areas, loss of tax revenue due to reduced production, reduced investment, war losses, and displacement from vulnerable areas such as Eilat, northern Israel, and the outer perimeter of the Gaza Strip.
Estimates also include future burdens if the war continues. Cost measurement includes indicators such as government budget deficits, domestic and foreign borrowing, debt-to-GDP ratio, investment and exports.
There are many general estimates about the cost of the Gaza war or the expected cost to the Israeli economy. These estimates vary depending on their scope, the assumptions they underpin and the time horizon they cover.
We will rely most on estimates from the Bank of Israel in the first place, the Ministry of Finance, as well as some external estimates. The average baseline of the estimates suggests that the war has already cost Israel between $50 billion and $55 billion, which is between 9 and 10 percent of GDP.
Some estimates go as high as NIS 300 billion because they take into account the long-term impact of the war's losses or future repercussions.
Notably, the cost of the war and its immediate repercussions jumped sharply during the two weeks of the Iranian war and the major military escalation in Lebanon. In this period, Israel's GDP fell by minus 3.5 percent quarter-on-quarter, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics. Private consumption fell by 4.1 percent and fixed investment (capital) by 12.3 percent.
However, the Bank of Israel Composite Index indicates growth of nearly 5 percent in the third quarter of this year, after contracting by about 4 percent in the second quarter. In addition, industrial production in July increased by about 5 percent compared to the average of the first quarter.
Growth indicators and critical economic indicators such as inflation, unemployment, and the shekel price show improvement since the beginning of the third quarter. For example, inflation fell below the target rate (3 percent) and strengthened the performance in the last week.
Israel's fiscal deficit stood at 4.7 percent of GDP in the year to August, down from 4.8 percent annually in July.
The cumulative deficit for the 12 months ending in August was 4.7 percent of GDP, or about NIS 98 billion in absolute terms.
According to figures released by Israeli Accountant General Yali Rotenberg, this is lower than the deficit recorded in the 12 months ending in July, when the deficit was 4.8 percent of GDP.
U.S. military aid continues to play a pivotal role in encouraging Israel to increase its aggression against the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza. At present, U.S. military aid alone contributes about 6 percent of GDP.
If we add to it economic aid and loan guarantees (at least $9 billion), the percentage rises to 7.7 percent, releasing the energies of aggression to the maximum possible limits at almost no cost.