Israel World's Fifth Biggest Arms Exporter
By Nina Gilbert, Jerusalem Post, 02/02/2000(February 2) - Israel is the fifth largest weapons exporter in the world, after the United States, Russia, China, and France, a Defense Ministry official said yesterday.
Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Ben-Hanan, head of the ministry's developing countries defense assistance division, also said that only 25 percent of the output of the country's defense industries are for local use. He warned that if export markets were lost it would result in a collapse of the entire industry.
Ben-Hanan was speaking in a meeting of the Knesset's Defense Budget Subcommittee, where the issue of arms-trading licenses was also addressed.
He informed the committee that anyone who has an Israeli passport and a clean police record can apply to obtain a license to trade in all types of Israeli weapons. At present, some 2,000 people or companies hold such licenses.
Ben-Hanan also noted that the IDF has stocks of unmarketable weapons valued at some $2 billion, according to catalogue estimates.
The weapons cannot be sold for various reasons, including a US veto, competition in world markets, especially in eastern Europe, and power struggles among Israeli weapons traders.
Committee chairman Avi Yehezkel warned against the rise in weapons traders and said he is drafting a bill to provide greater supervision of license holders and stiffer requirements for obtaining the permits.
Ben-Hanan expressed support for the measure, but noted
the difficulty in supervising traders who spend more than
half of the year abroad.
