Democratic Palestine : 29 (ص 38)
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- Democratic Palestine : 29 (ص 38)
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that the Palestinian people were having nothing of
‘autonomy’. While Israeli Chief of Staff Eitan proclaimed in
July 1982, «The battle in Beirut is for Greater Israel,» Israeli
ambassador to the US, Moshe Arens, revealed the Israeli
global ambitions in his August 1982 statement: «The war in
Lebanon has brought tremendous gains for the US and has
changed the relationship of forces between the great powers»
(cited in Haaretz, September 21, 1983).
The Zionist lobby in the US eagerly explained part of what
Arens meant. A booklet published by the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee in 1983, entitled Israel and the US
Navy, listed the benefits that had accrued to the US due to
military cooperation withthe Zionist state: «Israel’s provision
of combat data on the performance of American and Soviet
systems in the 1967 Six Day War, the War of Attrition, and the
1973 Yom Kippur War. Some data gleaned from the 1982
Lebanon campaign has already been provided by Israel and it
has offered to do more... The Israeli Air Force (IAF) has in-
directly assisted USAF by proving the superiority of American
aircraft over both Soviet fighters and Soviet air defenses» - a
reference to «IAF successes against the Syrians... The Soviet
The expansion of
IsraeliAirpower
1967-81
SAUDI
/ ARABIA
\\cHad Key | YEAR | PLANE | (MAX,
SUDAN —_ 1967 |Mirage3 | 300miles
Sse} 1971 154 700 miles
Paat 1981 |F1516 |1500miles
Union will therefore now have to devote large financial
resources to replacement and renovation of the systems that
have proven vulnerable... The military result of Lebanon is
thus a huge implicit gain for USAF, in undermining the value
of tens of billions of rubles in Soviet air defense expenditure».
Along the same lines, 57 US Congressmen directed a letter in
March 1983 to then US Defense Secretary Weinberger, urging
an agreement with ‘Israel’ on military data sharing since, in the
Lebanon war, ‘Israel’ had used over 100 US-developed
weapons systems in Lebanon, which had not previously been
utilized in full-scale combat (chronicled in Journal of Palestine
Studies 48, Summer 1983).
«We can say that we really put US technology to a real-
world-test in Israel,» asserted Major General Uri Tsimhoni,
Israeli military attache in Washington from 1984-86. In an in-
terview with Defense News, August 11, 1986, Tsimhoni spoke
about US-Israeli cooperation and joint development of NATO
weapons, noting, «We really have to defeat many of the same
Soviet aircraft, the same Soviet tanks, whether it’s in the War-
saw Pact or in Syria or in North Korea.»
38
The culmination of Israeli incorporation into the US’s global
anti-Soviet campaign was the Zionist state’s 1986 decision to
join the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars). Thus ‘Israel’
took a step ever more radical than some of the NATO allies
were prepared fo take. (See Democratic Palestine no.23 for
coverage of US—Israeli SDI cooperation.)
THE ARC OF INTERVENTION
Due to the failures experienced in Lebanon, the Israeli
military did undertake tactical readjustments, but these did not
head in a less interventionist direction. Upon succeeding
Sharon as defense minister, Moshe Arens worked to reorganize
the Israeli armed forces. «An outline of his plan appeared in
Monitin (April 1983), accompanied with a map of the areas
included in Israel’s strategic planning. The map has Israel in
the center with an arc indicating the boundaries of its interven-
tion. Within this arc lie Libya, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia, the en-
tire Arabian Peninsula and Iran. The temptation to extend the
arc to a full circle and speculate on its boundaries is almost ir-
resistable» (Palestine Focus, August 1983).
THE LAVI
The development of the Lavi fighter jet was another sign of
the Zionist state’s intentions to elevate its interventionist
capacity and strategic alliance with US imperialism. Among
the interrelated aims was procuring US funds to bail the Israeli
Aircraft Industries, the biggest employer in ‘Israel’, out of
economic stagnation, at a time when the Israeli government
had no extra funds. Moshe Arens, Defense Minister in 1983-4,
was the prime mover of the Lavi project. In an interview with
Jerusalem Post (January 31, 1986), he spelled out the
effects the Lavi would have on Israeli status in the region and
internationally: «When we go and buy an F-16, the-Arabs
know we have an F-16. When we build a Lavi, they don’t know
what we have... And then they have to ask themselves what else
have these people (the Israelis) been able to do... The plane is
50 per cent American, and represents something that has never
been done in the Western world before. No other country has
developed an aircraft with the U.S. as a cooperative venture
-something that opens both marketing and joint production
possibilities between the two countries, in addition to the ob-
vious statement this makes about the strength of the strategic
bond between us.»
In an interview with Defense and Foreign Affairs, February
1986, Arens also admitted that ‘Israel’ is in fact becoming
more and not less dependent on the US. When asked if the Lavi
project negated Israeli self-reliance, he said, «... we’re not at-
taching the kind of importance that we did in past years in
gaining independence, in having everything manufactured
here.»
In the same period the Lavi was being developed, a US plan
to fund a Jordanian Rapid Deployment Force died in Congress
due to Israeli opposition.
The Lavi project was halted in autumn 1987 when the Israeli
government finally conceded to the US assessment that the
expenses of its production were prohibitive. Still, the Israelis
(and the US ) have the blueprints; even if they never produce
this warplane, they can sell the know-how and technology in-
volved. A recent issue of Israeli Foreign Affairs (December
1987) wrote about indications that South Africa may produce a
similar warplane based on having recruited thousands of
Israeli technicians and engineers who worked on the Lavi pro-
ject: «When the Israeli Cabinet canceled the Lavi aircraft pro- - هو جزء من
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