The Israeli prime minister had just suggested that his nation be weaned off the American military aid it has relied on for decades. Not only that, he wanted to do so within 10 years. “We very deeply appreciate the military aid that America has given us over the years, but here too we’ve come of age. We’ve developed incredible capacities. We want to be as independent as possible”, Benjamin Netanyahu said. The announcement poses a fundamental question: can the Jewish state survive without its US protector?
The U.S. aid forces Israel into a subservient relationship and limits Israel’s ability to make its own strategic decisions. Also, there is growing unease among Israeli strategists as to how far into the future they can be sure of US military support. While Donald Trump has good reason to claim to be the most pro-Israel president in history, the feelings of his Maga base are open to question. For many in the movement, “America first” means, or should mean, isolationism, to which spending billions of US taxpayer dollars on foreign militaries is simply anathema. Unlike pre-Maga Republicanism, the party is also now far less dominated by the Evangelical Christian vote, a bloc long characterised by avid Zionism. Coupled with this, a nasty strain of anti-Semitism seems to be taking hold in Maga.
For Mr Netanyahu and his security officials, the only thing that matters is Israel’s survival and being prepared for any future regional war. “Netanyahu, but beyond him, the security and military planning establishment, they don’t think in election cycles, they think in decades. They think in terms of survival strategy and needing to be prepared for what comes next. Having a largely homegrown munitions industry would certainly give planners peace of mind in the nightmare scenario of a prolonged state-on-state war where the US withheld its support. The fact is that while diverging drastically from the US is unthinkable, those on Israel’s dominant Right want more freedom of action, and they feel their country is now financially strong enough – “come of age” in Mr Netanyahu’s words – to pay for it.