Uprising Poses Budgetary Calamity for Israeli Army

One of the lesser-noticed aspects of the current trouble in the West Bank and Gaza is its effect on the long-term posture of the Israeli Defense Forces. Not only has the uprising taken a heavy toll in terms of the army’s morale, which already had been seriously undermined by the ill-fated 1982 incursion into Lebanon; it has also seriously disrupted the course of Israel’s long-term defense program.

It is difficult to gauge just how much the Palestinian uprising has cost Israel in terms of defense-budget resources. Estimates vary widely across a range of $100 million to $300 million. Moreover, the drain on the budget is a steady one: Every passing day without a return to normality in the occupied territories further draws down Israel’s available resources for operations and maintenance. At the same time, the extension of reservists’ annual military tours by 50%--from 36 to 54 days--adds an automatic fixed cost to the budget over and above the variable costs attributed to actual military operations in the territories.

Contrary to what some have implied, these operations are not being financed by the U.S. military assistance program. The funds are drawn from the domestic (shekel) budget that is geared to operations and maintenance as well as to some procurement and research and development. Significantly, the United States has made it clear that it will not reimburse Israel for its operations and maintenance expenditures. Thus, Israel is very much on its own, and must cut back on training, deployments, force levels or projects that it had hoped to fund on its own.

But Israel can’t afford to reduce training and deployments. Flying hours are already down from the peak years of the 1970s, and the navy has laid up some of its patrol craft at the very time that the Palestine Liberation Organization continues to attempt sea-based attacks on Israel’s territory.

Nor can Israel afford to cut back on key secret research, development and procurement programs. These are funded from its own resources, which are already stretched thin. For example, Israel has found itself unable to contribute more than 10% of its shekel budget to the key anti-ballistic-missile program that it is pursuing in cooperation with the United States. Yet if Israel finds itself unable to fund that 10%, it jeopardizes the remaining funding that has been promised from American resources.

Israel’s only recourse, therefore, is to draw on the U.S. military-assistance program, and particularly its offshore procurement component (which enables Israel to spend dollars in Israel itself), for most of the development and procurement programs. This, too, poses a danger: Israel will be forced to cut back on key programs that were supposed to have been funded with military-assistance dollars.

In a sense Israel faces the dilemma that it confronted when it pushed ahead on the ill-fated Lavi aircraft: As it employs funds for a program--in this case, the hard-nosed policy in the occupied territories--that has no U.S. support, it prejudices the future of other desperately needed programs. And, because the policy has generated opposition among the American public, there is even less likelihood of Israel’s obtaining additional U.S. funding (already minimal as a result of the American deficit crisis). The Lavi had some supporters in Congress who were prepared to press for more funding to ease Israel’s programmatic burden, but no one in Congress is likely to make it easier for Israel to continue its current policies in the territories.

This dilemma for Israel’s military has arisen at the very time that Syria is re-arming with sophisticated military systems. Even more than the potential threat posed by the new Saudi missile batteries, it is Syrian ballistic-missile capabilities that have created a new and serious problem for Israel’s defenses.

Israel, for its part, is completing an agreement to purchase additional F-16s and F-15s at a cost of about $2 billion. Israel also hopes to launch a naval modernization program this year, it requires more helicopters, it is developing a new generation of remotely piloted vehicles, and it must acquire an anti-ballistic-missile capability--all within a virtually inflexible acquisition budget. Yet to forgo improvements in defense capabilities could be an invitation to another round of conflict, particularly with Syria.

Does the use of military forces in the occupied territories justify the risk to Israel’s external-security posture? The answer is difficult, but must be confronted all the same. For if Israel’s leaders choose to ignore these ramifications of their current internal-security policies, they may yet find themselves thrust into the most serious external military crisis since 1973. And this time the outcome would be as much, if not more, in doubt as it was during those fateful days after Yom Kippur.