Israel Military Service - The US imposes conditions on how aid, particularly military aid, can be used. For instance, the Leahy Law prohibits the export of US defense articles to military units complicit in human rights abuses. However, no Israeli unit has been penalized under this law.
Similarly, US economic aid to Israeli institutions such as universities was historically required to be used within Israel's pre-1967 borders. This condition was waived under the Trump administration. US support for Israel began in 1948 when the latter declared independence, and the US was one of the first countries to recognize Israel.
Israel Military Service
Shortly after, the US started providing economic aid, and to a much smaller extent, military aid to the new state. Gaza has been described as the world's largest open-air prison. Since 2006, Israel has imposed a land, sea and air blockade on its 2.1 million inhabitants.
How Much Does Israel Spend On Its Military?
Israeli forces continue to militarily occupy East Jerusalem and the West Bank where they have built hundreds of illegal settlements. Israel is a key global supplier of advanced weaponry, including drones, missiles, radar technology and other weapons systems.
In 2020, it was the 12th-largest arms supplier with more than $345m in arms sales to 16 countries, according to the SIPRI database. Among the specialized infantry units within the IDF are the Nahal Brigade, a unit established by David Ben-Gurion which combines military and agricultural training;
the Kfir Brigade, a unit specializing in urban combat and counterterrorism; the Combat Engineering Corps; and the Paratroopers. The commander of the IDF is the chief of the general staff, a position subject to civilian oversight by the minister of defense.
The chiefs of the air force and navy report to the chief of staff, as well as regional commanders and the heads of various defense directorates. One such directorate is the Intelligence Corps, which, along with Mossad (external operations) and Shin Bet (internal operations), forms the three pillars of Israel's intelligence and counterintelligence establishment.
How Much Does The Us Spend On Israel’s Military?
In comparison, the US allocated $19m in all forms of aid to the Palestinians in 2020, according to USAID, after the Trump administration suspended most funding to the Palestinian Authority as his government promoted a so-called "peace plan" that the Palestinians denounced
as one-sided. These numbers do not reflect other indirect forms of military aid. For example, the US military maintains a large "emergency" stockpile of weapons in Israel. Currently valued at $3.4bn, the Israeli military can use this cache in emergencies.
Relations between the two countries have blossomed since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014. Since then, an Indian diplomat was recorded advocating for the use of the "Israeli model" in Indian-administered Kashmir, referring to the Israeli settlements in the
occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Since the PA was established in 1994, the US has provided $5 billion in total assistance. Unlike aid to Israel, Palestinian aid has many conditions. For instance, under the Taylor Force Act, economic aid can be cut off if the Palestinian Authority makes any "payments that incentivize terror".
The Biden administration has indicated that it will resume aid to the Palestinians, although the totals will remain a fraction of those provided to Israel. According to the Palestinian-led movement Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) – which has called for a non-violent, people-led movement to pressure Israel to end the occupation and provide equal rights and a right of return to Palestinians, Israel uses
military force "to maintain an unlawful regime of occupation, colonialism and apartheid". Israel's 11-day military campaign killed at least 253 people, including 66 children, in Gaza. At least 12 people were killed in Israel by rockets fired by Palestinian armed groups in Gaza.
The UN Human Rights Council has set up a panel to investigate both sides for possible war crimes and human rights group Amnesty International has renewed its call for a halt to US weapons sales to Israel.
Israel operates a vast military apparatus where military service is mandatory for citizens over the age of 18. In 2020, the country spent $22bn on its military, according to a database compiled by SIPRI, a research institute focused on conflict and armaments.
Israel spent some $2,508 per capita and allocated 12 percent of its total government spending to defense. Israel is the most significant recipient of total US foreign military financing (FMF) – a program that provides grants and loans to US allies to acquire "US defense equipment, services and training".
During the past two decades, 55 percent of all US FMF was dedicated to Israel, more than the rest of the world combined, according to the Security Assistance Monitor, part of the Center for International Policy, a Washington DC-based think-tank.
Israel has long been seen by US legislators as an ally to help protect US strategic interests in the Middle East. Initially, this included the containment of Soviet influence in the region. According to the US Congressional Research Service, factors for the continuing military support to Israel include shared strategic interests, "domestic US support for Israel" and "a mutual commitment to democratic values".
Last month, as Israel bombarded the besieged Gaza Strip for the fourth time in 12 years, the United States approved a $735m arms sale to Israel. The approval was criticized by legislators in Congress, and several Democrats introduced resolutions to block the sale of Boeing's precision-guided missiles.
Several progressive US legislators have also called on the Biden administration to condition US aid to Israel. US Congresswoman Betty McCollum introduced a bill that would ban Israel from using US aid to detain Palestinian children, destroy Palestinian property and continue to annex occupied Palestinian land.
US funding for Israel has typically been, and remains, a bipartisan affair, with both Democrat and Republican administrations providing it. During the past two decades, US aid for Israel's military has increased despite Israeli military campaigns in Gaza in 2008/2009, 2012 and 2014 that have killed more than 3,500 Palestinians.
Approximately 100 Israelis have been killed during the course of the three wars. Visualised, the combination of these metrics shows how much of an outlier Israel's weapons spending is relative to some of the largest militaries in the world, including the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
Regarding the spike in US military aid in 2003, Stephen Zunes, professor of politics at San Francisco University, noted that the increase "was part of an overall increase in US arms transfers to the Middle East and US military spending" in the wake of the
2001 al-Qaeda attacks on the US, the US-led war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq. South Korea has a similar arrangement. These arrangements were originally designed to facilitate rapid US troop deployment. In practice, for Israel, they serve as an extra layer of defense and allow the Israeli army to quickly access ammunition and weaponry during a conflict.
Unlike other FMF recipients, Israel is allowed to use FMF funds to buy from local companies until 2028, under the latest US-Israel MOU on defense. Human rights groups such as Amnesty International have asked US President Biden to reconsider the latest approval of arms sales to Israel amid a situation in which "human rights and international humanitarian law are violated every day".
Israel imports weapons exclusively from Western countries, with 83 percent of its imports coming from the US between 1950 and 2020. In contrast, 23 percent of its exports went to India, and it has exported far and wide.
Israel controversially continued exports to South Africa's apartheid government. The US is by far the biggest supplier of military aid to Israel, providing the country with a total of $3.8bn in 2020 as part of a record $38bn deal across a 10-year period signed under former US President Barack Obama in 2016. Previously
, Israel also received substantial US economic aid along with military supplies. As Israel has grown richer, economic aid, which began in 1951, has been phased out and was almost eliminated in 2007. Rights groups have accused India's military of abuses in Kashmir including intimidation, torture, extrajudicial killings and arbitrary arrests of Kashmiris.
In 2019, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called for a formal inquiry into these allegations. With respect to the surge in US military aid in 2000, Zunes noted that the US had agreed in the 1998 Wye River Memorandum to boost aid to Israel "in return for [relatively minor] Israeli concessions in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks".
From 2015 to 2020, Israel's major weapons export markets were, as a percentage of the total, India (43 percent), Azerbaijan (16 percent), Vietnam (10 percent) and the US (4 percent), according to the SIPRI database. India was the largest buyer of Israeli weapons in 2020.
Due to the IDF's reliance on reserve units to provide the overwhelming majority of its infantry strength, it could more accurately be categorized as a citizen militia supplemented by a small corps of career officers and active-duty conscripts.
Military service is compulsory for Jews and Druze, both men and women, and for Circassian men. Conscription deferments are available to students, and exemptions from service are granted to married women, women with children, and men who are undertaking religious studies.
The period of active-duty conscription is 32 months for men and 24 months for women; this is followed by a decades-long period of compulsory reserve duty (to age 50 for women and age 55 for men).
Washington is also bound, under its domestic laws such as the US-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2014, to protect Israel's so-called "qualitative military edge", meaning Israel should maintain military superiority over its regional neighbors. The law guarantees Israel access to advanced US weapons.
US officials also regularly discuss regional defense sales with Israel, to ensure that their ally is not disadvantaged militarily. Military service age and obligation: 18 years of age for compulsory (Jews, Druze) military service; 17 years of age for voluntary (Christians, Muslims, Circassians) military service;
both sexes are obligated to military service; conscript service obligation - 32 months for enlisted men and about 24 months for enlisted women (varies based on military occupation), 48 months for officers; pilots commit to 9-year service;
reserve obligation to age 41-51 (men), age 24 (women) (2020) However, military aid to Israel greatly increased after the 1967 Six-Day war when Israel defeated neighboring Arab armies and began occupying the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.
The skew towards military financing since 1967 has meant that it represents nearly 80 percent of all aid provided by the US.
israel mandatory military service, israel military equipment, israel military service obligation, israel military draft, israeli military service obligation, do all israelis serve in the military, israel military strength, idf