Defense Minister Benny Gantz lauds the normalization agreement due to be signed in Washington between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, while expressing concerns over both the effects it could have on the Palestinian front and the apparently related sale of F-35 fighter jets to Abu Dhabi.
Speaking to military correspondents on a wide variety of topics, Gantz stresses that the deal — which he was not informed of until after it had been brokered by his political rival Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump — was an overwhelmingly positive development for Israel and its situation in the region.
“I can only praise this,” he says.
He notes that while normalizing ties with faraway countries was undoubtedly a good thing, it was “also important to make peace with our neighbors” and calls for renewing diplomatic efforts with the Palestinians. Gantz also adds that the UAE and Bahrain were specifically countries “whom we’ve never fought and who have never fought us, not even through proxies.”
The defense minister says the proposed sale of the advanced warplanes to the Emiratis was a “serious matter” with potentially major ramifications on Israel’s military advantage in the region.
In this August 5, 2019, photo released by the U.S. Air Force, an F-35 fighter jet pilot and crew prepare for a mission at Al-Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates. (Staff Sgt. Chris Thornbury/US Air Force via AP)
The defense minister says that his ministry will work with the Pentagon to determine if and how such a sale would harm Israel’s so-called “Qualitative Military Edge,” which the US is legally bound to maintain, and what could be done to maintain the Jewish state’s superior capabilities.
Gantz refuses to comment on the specific ways his ministry was proposing that the US could offset the damage — with some combination of restricting the UAE’s use of the F-35 in some way or selling even more powerful weaponry to Israel — but said that this will be an ongoing discussion for the coming months.
“It is an American prerogative — not an Israeli prerogative — to decide whom to sell [the F-35 to],” Gantz notes.
Defense Minister Benny Gantz speaks to local leaders from southern Israel, August 19, 2020. (Oded Karni/GPO)
The defense minister, who had just finished meeting with the new head of the Israel Defense Forces’ Central Command, Maj. Gen. Tamir Yadai, prior to the briefing, says he did not expect that there would be a large-scale outbreak of violence by Palestinians in response to the normalization agreements with the UAE and Bahrain.
However, he notes that the Palestinian issue was growing increasingly untenable, with no diplomatic progress toward a political solution to the conflict, deepening economic woes for the Palestinian Authority and the added stress of the coronavirus pandemic.
Gantz says that while there was no indication of an imminent uprising, there were concerns of a “straw that breaks the camel’s back.”
— Judah Ari Gross
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