Gaza war: Where does Israel get its weapons?

Western governments are coming under growing pressure to halt arms sales to Israel over how it is waging the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Israel is a major weapons exporter, but its military has been heavily reliant on imported aircraft, guided bombs and missiles to conduct what experts have described as one of the most intense and destructive aerial campaigns in recent history.

Campaign groups and some politicians among Israel’s Western allies say arms exports should be suspended because, they say, Israel is failing to do enough to protect the lives of civilians and ensure enough humanitarian aid reaches them.

On Friday, the UN Human Rights Council backed a weapons ban, with 28 countries voting in favour, six against and 13 abstentions. The US and Germany – which account for the vast majority of Israel’s arms imports – both voted against. Germany said it did so because the resolution did not explicitly condemn Hamas.

The war was triggered by Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October, which killed about 1,200 people, mainly civilians, according Israeli tallies. More than 33,000 people have been killed in Gaza, 70% of them children and women, the Hamas-run health ministry says.

Israel insists that its forces are working to avoid civilian casualties, accuses Hamas of deliberately putting civilians in the line of fire and has said there are no limits on aid deliveries.

The US is by far the biggest supplier of arms to Israel, having helped it build one of the most technologically sophisticated militaries in the world.

The US provides Israel with $3.8bn (£3bn) in annual military aid under a 10-year agreement that is intended to allow its ally to maintain what it calls a “qualitative military edge” over neighbouring countries.

Israel has used the grants to finance orders of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, a stealth aircraft considered the most advanced ever made. It has so far ordered 75 and taken delivery of more than 30 of the aircraft. It was the first country other than the US to receive an F-35 and the first to use one in combat.

Part of the aid – $500m annually – is set aside to fund missile defence programmes, including the jointly-developed Iron Dome, Arrow and David’s Sling systems. Israel has relied on them during the war to defend itself against rocket, missile and drone attacks by Palestinian armed groups in Gaza, as well as other Iran-backed armed groups based in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.

In the days after Hamas’s 7 October attack, President Joe Biden said the US was “surging additional military assistance” to Israel.

Since the start of the war, only two US military sales to Israel have been made public after receiving emergency approval – one for 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition worth $106m and the other for $147m of components to make 155mm artillery shells.

However, SIPRI’s report says that despite the deliveries, the total volume of Israeli arms imports from the US in 2023 was almost the same as in 2022.

One deal that is large enough to require Congressional notification is the $18bn sale of up to 50 F-15 fighter jets, news about which emerged this week. Congress has not yet approved the deal.

Even though the aircraft would need to be built from scratch and would not be delivered immediately, the sale is expected to be hotly debated by Mr Biden’s Democratic Party, many of whose representatives in Congress and supporters are increasingly concerned by Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has said she is prepared to block the deal and has accused Israel of “indiscriminate bombing” in Gaza.

Germany is the next biggest arms exporter to Israel, accounting for 30% of imports between 2019 and 2023, according to SIPRI.

Components for air defence systems and communications equipment accounted for most of the sales, according to the DPA news agency.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been a staunch supporter of Israel’s right to self-defence throughout the war and, although his tone on Israeli actions in Gaza has shifted in recent weeks and there has been some debate in Germany, the arms sales do not appear to be at risk of suspension.

Italy is the third-biggest arms exporter to Israel, but it accounted for only 0.9% of Israeli imports between 2019 and 2023. They have reportedly included helicopters and naval artillery.

The sales amounted to €13.7m ($14.8m; £11.7m) last year, according to national statistics bureau ISTAT.

Defence Minister Guido Crosetto told parliament last month that Italy had honoured existing contracts after checking them on a case-by-case basis and ensuring “they did not concern materials that could be used against civilians”.

The Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) says that since 2008, the UK has granted arms export licences to Israel worth £574m ($727m) in total.

Much of those are for components used in US-made warplanes that end up in Israel. But the British government is coming under growing pressure to suspend even those exports.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said the UK has a “very careful export licensing regime” and said Israel must “act in accordance with international humanitarian law”. The UK government is also preparing an assessment that will advise on the risk of Israel breaching international law in its actions from early 2024.

But a senior government source told the BBC that an arms embargo on Israel was “not going to happen”.

The government of Canada, whose arms sales to Israel were worth 21.3m Canadian dollars ($15.7m; £12.4m) in 2022, said in January that it had suspended approving new exit permits for weapons until it could ensure they were being used in accordance with Canadian law. However, pre-existing permits remained valid.

Israel has also built up its own defence industry with US help and now ranks as the ninth-largest arms exporter in the world, with a focus on advanced technological products rather than large-scale hardware.

It held a 2.3% share of global sales between 2019 and 2023, according to SIPRI, with India (37%), the Philippines (12%) and the US (8.7%) the three main recipients. The sales were worth $12.5bn (£9.9bn) in 2022, according to the Israeli defence ministry.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) made up 25% of those exports, followed by missiles, rockets and air defence systems (19%) and radar and electronic warfare systems (13%), the ministry said.

In September, just before the war began, Germany agreed a $3.5bn deal with Israel to buy the sophisticated Arrow 3 missile defence system, which intercepts long-range ballistic missiles. The deal – Israel’s largest-ever – had to be approved by the US because it jointly developed the system.

Israel is also home to a vast US arms depot set up in 1984 to pre-position supplies for its troops in case of a regional conflict, as well as to give Israel quick access to weapons in emergencies.

The Pentagon shipped about 300,000 155mm artillery shells from the War Reserve Stockpile Ammunition-Israel to Ukraine following the Russian invasion.

Stockpiled munitions at the depot have also reportedly been supplied to Israel since the start of the Gaza war.