Monday, Mar. 28, 1983
Israeli Arms for Sale
Scarcely noticed in the continuing tension in Central America over the past year is the fact that a principal arms supplier to at least three countries in the region is Israel.
This is hardly news to arms experts, who know that Israel has become the world's seventh largest armaments exporter (after the U.S., the Soviet Union, France, Britain, West Germany and Italy). Its arms and military software sales have doubled in five years, and in 1982 exceeded $1.2 billion. Of this amount, some $150 million went to South America, principally to Argentina and Peru. Only about $20 million worth of weapons and military training programs were sold to Central America last year, but the figure is expected to reach $45 million to $50 million this year.
The presence of Israeli arms in the region is not new. During the Nicaraguan civil war that ended with the overthrow of Dictator Anastasio Somoza by Sandinista rebels in 1979, both sides fought with Israeli guns. In the 1976 border skirmish between Honduras and El Salvador, the two countries used Israeli infantry weapons. Since 1976, Israel has become a leading supplier to Guatemala, Honduras and to a lesser extent Costa Rica.
In Guatemala the Israelis have sold the government everything from antiterrorism equipment to transport planes. Army outposts in the jungle have become near replicas of Israeli army field camps. At one such outpost in Huehuetenango, Colonel Gustavo Menendez Herrera points out that his troops are using Israeli communications equipment, mortars, submachine guns, battle gear and helmets.
In Honduras the Israeli-supplied equipment in use by the armed forces includes Galil assault rifles and Super-Mystere jets that Israel bought from France in the mid-1950s, refurbished and sold to Honduras in 1976. Israel is on the verge of selling its Kfir-C2 jet fighter to the Honduran air force, but it must first secure U.S. permission because the Kfirs are equipped with American-built General Electric J79 turbojets. Despite warnings from some U.S. Government quarters that such a deal will simply invite the stationing of Soviet MiGs in Nicaragua and escalate the Central American arms race, the Reagan Administration is now considering giving its approval.
Israel has several reasons for pursuing its arms trade. Most important, it needs the money to help cover the huge research and development costs of its own weaponry. In consequence, it does not ask too many questions about a prospective buyer.
The Israeli arms sales campaign also has political goals: to win new friends and to support governments that oppose the radical Arab states and particularly the Palestine Liberation Organization. In Central America the Israelis are actively wooing the regimes that are hostile to Cuba and Nicaragua, two countries that strongly support the P.L.O. The policy, in short, is based on the ancient adage that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend "
Inevitably, the Nicaraguan government and others have charged that Israel is merely serving as Washington's proxy in Central America. U.S. officials deny this, though some acknowledge that Israel occasionally makes life easier for them by supplying arms to regimes that the Reagan Administration feels it cannot support so strongly or so openly. Says an American expert based in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa: "Israel operates without the restrictions imposed on us in this part of the world. It doesn't have to explore the abuse of human rights. It has arms to sell, and the governments in this region need them." An Israeli weapons dealer puts it more bluntly: "Just about anyone who shows any interest in buying arms from us can have them."
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