(Bloomberg) -- As Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza has grown increasingly controversial, arms suppliers including Italy, Spain and Canada have all halted sales. Yet that mattered little while the US persisted with shipments. 

About 70% of Israel’s military imports come from the US, which has made more than 200 deliveries since the conflict started in October. The decision by Washington to withhold some 3,500 bombs this week has therefore been taken as a significant and rarely used warning.

“American armaments and, above all, precision bombs are the bread and butter of our warfare in Gaza, and in future operations,” said Matan Kahana, an Israeli centrist lawmaker and former F-16 squadron commander. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refrained from public comment on the US shipment delay, which was made over concerns in Washington about a potential Israeli offensive on the Gazan city of Rafah, where more than 1.4 million Palestinians have taken refuge. Yet the leader has been warning for some time of the inherent risk in relying too much on others for its growing military needs. 

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Three months ago, he instructed the country’s defense and finance ministers to produce a plan to “strengthen Israel’s defense industries for decades to come.” That will require “huge investment to ensure our security independence and freedom of action,” he said.

Developing an arms industry that includes local production lines for aerial munitions now supplied by the US is likely to be a big ask, especially in the short term. So far, little has happened, with Finance Ministry officials saying teams have been set up but with no framework or deadline. 

Even with swift decision making and urgent investment deployed, nothing could be achieved in time to independently maintain the intensity of Israel’s seven-month bombardment of Gaza in pursuit of Hamas, alongside near daily trading of fire with Hezbollah in Lebanon and last month’s direct confrontation with Iran.   

Read More: Foiling Iran’s Missile Attack Probably Cost More Than $1 Billion

Defense Innovation

Israel’s defense procurement policy was put in place in the early 1990s by late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who argued that self-sufficiency is a mirage if even locally developed weapons require foreign components. He curtailed local manufacture of big-ticket items and sought to buy anything possible abroad, focusing Israeli industries on what was unavailable, whether for political or military reasons, or didn’t exist. This was dubbed “the boutique industries policy” and helped Israel become a world leader in defense innovation.

At the same time, Israel became heavily reliant on others, increasingly the US and Germany, for combat jets, submarines, warships and aerial artillery. At the end of 2023, pending deliveries of major arms to Israel included 61 combat aircraft from the US and four submarines from Germany.

Zeev Landau, head of the Defense Ministry’s procurement department, said in a recent newspaper interview that Israel’s goal for the day after the Gaza war is independence, “mainly in the area of aircraft bombs, currently purchased entirely from the US.”

He added that Israel wants “a mechanism that will maintain over time the minimum orders needed to maintain a production line that will be economic.” He expects it to take at least two to three years of preparations.

Landau named Elbit Systems Ltd. – which acquired the former Israeli Military Industries — as the most appropriate company to produce aerial bombs. The group’s new plant in Ramat Beka in Israel’s south, scheduled to open later this year, was marked as the designated production site.

“We are also in the process of making a decision on which of the raw materials required for the production of bombs will begin to be produced in Israel,” Landau said. “Here, too, we strive for independence. We will prioritize raw materials that we will produce on our own, or we will hold strategic stocks of them in Israel — like fuel, which has an emergency stockpile.”

US Reliance

Until then, Israel remains reliant on the US, especially for its air force, as a recent Finance Ministry report demonstrates. It lays out in detail medium and long-term purchase orders that Israel has placed in local and foreign markets.

A total of 5.6 billion shekels ($1.5 billion) — 97% of what Israel will spend on munitions up to 2029 – will go to the US Army or an unnamed US company. Two thirds of armament orders scheduled for supply until 2027 will come from the US Army and an unnamed US company for a total of 2.1 billion shekels. A third of the warheads Israel has ordered and will be supplied this year and next are from the US Air Force and total 289 million shekels.

All of this is now a subject of intense discussion since a senior US official confirmed on Wednesday that Washington paused the shipment of bombs, split roughly evenly between 2000-pound (907-kilogram) and 500-pound explosives. The US hasn’t made a final decision on whether to proceed with the shipment, according to the official.

Israel’s seven-month-old war in Gaza began when Hamas operatives invaded the south of the country, killing about 1,200 people and abducting 250 more. Israel’s counteroffensive has left about 35,000 dead, according to health officials in Hamas-run Gaza. Iran-backed Hamas is considered a terrorist group by the US and European Union. 

--With assistance from Julius Domoney.

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