Annual U.S. Aid to Israel To Reach $3B

The American government will increase aid for Israeli defense by 25% to $3 billion annually over the next 10 years, Prime Minister Olmert of Israel said.

The American government offered the enlarged aid package when Mr. Olmert visited Washington last month, the prime minister said at a Cabinet meeting yesterday, his spokeswoman, Miri Eisin, said by telephone.

"In addition to the considerable increase in aid, a renewed and explicit promise was given that Israel's qualitative military edge over the Arab states will be ensured," Mr. Olmert said.

The extra money is part of a package that the White House will ask Congress to approve. It includes increasing military aid to Egypt to $13 billion over 10 years and selling Saudi Arabia and five other Gulf countries $20 billion in arms. The measures are part of an effort by the American government to counter Iran's rising influence in the Middle East, Rebecca Goodrich-Hinton, a Defense Department spokeswoman, said Saturday.

The aid package comes as Israel is stepping up defense spending, following last year's Lebanon war. A government commission said in April that the army wasn't adequately trained or supplied for the monthlong conflict, during which about a fifth of the country's population was confined to bomb shelters because of rocket attacks.

"This might be compensation for the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia," Mark Heller, director of research at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University said in a telephone interview. "There is also an Iranian element in there, in the sense of building up missile defenses."

He added that much of the military aid to Israel must be spent in America according to the terms of aid packages given in the past, an element that makes it easier to get the program approved by Congress.

Ten years ago, Israel initiated a program to gradually phase out American civilian aid while increasing military aid, on the premise that while American public opinion understood the strategic importance to the American government of strengthening Israel militarily, it was less forgiving on the question of economic aid.

Under the last agreement, signed in 1998, Israel received an annual $1.2 billion in economic aid, an amount that was gradually reduced by $120 million each year, and $1.8 billion in military aid, an amount that was increased by $60 million annually, so that by end of the period, civilian aid was phased out and military aid expanded to $2.4 billion, according to the Finance Ministry's Web site.