Haaretz
Tevet 4, 5765
A crisis of confidence
has broken out between the Pentagon and the Israeli Defense Ministry in
the wake of U.S. complaints about Israeli deviations from weapons
purchasing and sales rules and an Israeli report to the U.S. about a
weapons sale to China.
According to Israeli sources, as a result of
the crisis that broke out some months ago, U.S. Undersecretary of Defense
Douglas Feith cut off ties with Defense Ministry Director General Amos
Yaron.
Feith, the number 3 man in the Pentagon, told people who
tried to mediate to solve the problem, "it's either me or Amos Yaron."
Feith is one of the ideological neoconservative Jews in the American
administration and is considered one of the architects of the war in
Iraq.
Part of Feith's job is to oversee the defense relationship
with Israel. He and Yaron jointly chair a joint committee for planning
defense policy. Channel 2 reported last night that the Americans are
demanding Yaron be fired and that he will leave the Defense Ministry in
the near future. An Israeli defense source denied this, saying that
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz is fully behind Yaron and does not intend to
replace him.
Apparently, Israel is instead expecting Feith's
departure from the Pentagon, regarding him as the problem in the affair.
The defense source said the scandal began at a working-level defense
meeting discussing Israeli defense exports to China. At the meeting, the
Israelis mentioned a specific sale to China from a few years ago. The
Americans were surprised, saying they knew nothing about it, and accused
Israel of deliberately misleading them.
The Israeli ambassador to
Washington, Danny Ayalon, spoke with senior officials in the Pentagon
Wednesday and they made clear there is no American demand to fire Yaron.
Ayalon said the issue of Israeli sales to China was discussed in the
"proper channels" and "it is on the way to a solution." He emphasized
that, in any case, the ties between Israel and the U.S. "are as strong as
ever."
For more than a decade, the U.S. has been raising grave
concerns about Israeli weapons exports to China. First, they accused
Israel of transferring U.S. technologies without permission. In the summer
of 2000, they forced the cancelation of the sale to China of a Phalcon, an
airborne radar system equipped with advanced Israeli-made aeronautics on
board a Russian-made plane.
The new crisis is over the sale of a
weapons system from Israel to China. According to Israeli sources,
information about the weapons system sold to China was provided to the
U.S. by working-level Israeli officials, but when Yaron and Mor explained
the deals, the senior American officials were completely surprised,
raising worries that the Israelis had been hiding information from
them.
"At first it seemed terrible," said an Israeli source
Wednesday night, "but we managed to make clear to them that nobody lied
and that we gave them the correct information."