Israel said last week it would move to produce heavy bombs and raw materials for defense domestically, after learning “a central lesson from the war” in Gaza.

By Jacob Tiffy Madison  | Jan 12, 2025 at 08:06 p.m. ET Updated | Middle East

Israel is investing millions of dollars to build more heavy weapons domestically over growing concerns about its dependence on arms imports from the United States and other Western countries — even as the flow of arms from those countries continues mostly unabated.

But experts say that Israel’s reliance on the one country it turns to most for weapons — the United States — would be hard to shake, especially as President-elect Donald Trump returns to office.

In a sign of its burgeoning domestic ambition, Israel’s Defense Ministry said last week that it had signed deals worth about $275 million to produce heavy bombs and raw materials for defense, a major addition to the country’s already sizable arms industry.

“This is a central lesson from the war that will enable the [Israel Defense Forces] to continue operating powerfully in all theaters,” Defense Ministry Director General Eyal Zamir said at a signing ceremony Tuesday.

In the war following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, the Israeli military has used heavy bombs, supplied in part by U.S. companies such as Boeing, to level and make uninhabitable much of the Gaza Strip. Those actions have killed more than 40,000 people, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. This destruction has made the munitions a subject of special scrutiny.

Some Western countries have threatened to cut arms exports to Israel, citing potential harm to civilians. In the United States, by far the largest arms supplier to Israel, the Biden administration has received hundreds of reports that U.S. weapons were being used in attacks that posed a risk to civilians in Gaza.

While the Biden administration has largely kept the weapons flowing — delaying, but not canceling, some shipments of 2,000-pound bombs — Israeli officials reacted with concern, pledging to push forward with what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters a year ago was a plan to “disconnect from dependency on the rest of the world,” thereby reducing any leverage Israel’s allies might choose to wield.

President Joe Biden faced considerable backlash from his own base for continuing to send weapons to Israel, with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and a small number of Democrats leading multiple attempts to block such sales in November.

Israel’s dependence on the United States had been “underscored by the war and the growing criticism of its use of weaponry by progressive elements in the Democratic Party,” said Efraim Inbar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, an Israeli think tank.

Reliance on U.S. bombs

Amid the war in Gaza and other connected conflicts, business has been booming for Israel’s arms industry, with exports in 2024 widely expected to hit another record. However, the industry often works in high-tech niches such as air defense — made famous by Israel’s Iron Dome and its separate Arrow system.

The company selected last week to produce heavy bombs domestically is Elbit Systems, one of Israel’s big three arms producers, along with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Rafael. Slovakia recently agreed to pay $583 million for the Barak MX air defense system, which IAI developed.

Israeli companies have indicated they are ready for the shift. “Elbit’s employees and managers are committed to meeting the changing needs of the IDF and the defense establishment,” Elbit CEO Bezhalel Machlis said Tuesday.

Analysts say Israel had chosen to import heavy bombs from the United States — as well as the advanced Joint Direct Attack Munition kits that can be used for precision targeting — primarily for economic reasons rather than technological ones.

“Israel has refrained, until recently, in producing certain munitions primarily because of profit considerations,” Inbar said. “It is cheaper to buy them with the money allocated to Israel by the U.S.”

The large amount of U.S. military funding to Israel, and the way those funds are channeled, are key factors. The United States has been a major fiscal backer of Israeli defense, with U.S. security assistance to Israel totaling more than $200 billion since the aftermath of World War II, making it the largest recipient of U.S. aid.

Much of this assistance falls under the category of the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program, which provides grants that Israel uses to purchase U.S. military goods and services. In the past, Israel had been permitted to spend roughly a quarter of that money on domestic production, a provision the countries agreed in 2016 to phase out.

Companies including Elbit set up U.S. subsidiaries to allow FMF money to continue to flow to them. It is not clear whether a new agreement, which the Trump administration is expected to sign after the current one expires in 2026, would allow FMF money to be spent domestically.

Some analysts doubt that Israeli domestic production of key goods could be accelerated anytime soon. “Even though Elbit would have some experience in this, building production capabilities takes time and lots of funds — just look at the U.S. struggles to increase capacity for globally needed munitions,” said Seth Binder, an expert at the Middle East Democracy Center, a Washington-based human rights group.

Israel would remain reliant on foreign imports for much of its key equipment, including the United States for combat aircraft such as the F-35 and Germany for submarines.

The push to build a raw materials facility also fits into a broader concern about the availability of crucial components for weapons — one shared by many countries, given global shortages of several explosive types, which first became obvious amid the war in Ukraine.

Pieter Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks global armaments, said the deal with Elbit suggested that Israel was importing explosive materials needed for bombs, warheads and missile motors.

“As the pressure increases on states to reconsider the supply of weapons and more important related components to Israel, Israel wants to ensure an even higher level of autonomy,” Wezeman said.

Trump’s leverage

While Trump has positioned himself as a strong supporter of the Israeli government, the supply of U.S. arms and other funding to Israel could provide important leverage.

But would he actually use it?

That remains a big question, given the president-elect’s repeated statements about the need for a Gaza peace deal. Some former Trump officials say he would be unlikely to do so.

Jason Greenblatt, former Trump White House special envoy to the Middle East, said that Trump’s support for Israel had been “unparalleled” and showed an understanding of how Israel’s military prowess enhanced stability for the United States and its allies in the Middle East.

Greenblatt said he did not believe Trump would use weapons shipments or military aid as leverage over Israel to push the country toward peace agreements. “President Trump knows that peace agreements can only be built with a recognition of reality, and the reality is that even with peace agreements, bad actors and terrorists will always be here,” Greenblatt said.

At the same time, the incoming president may not be keen on increased domestic production of weapons in Israel — especially if the United States ends up footing the bill — said William D. Hartung, an expert on the arms trade at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a U.S. think tank that advocates “diplomacy and restraint.” “Trump likes to pose as the ultimate dealmaker, and during his first term he touted how U.S. arms sales support jobs in America,” Hartung said. “Letting Israel spend U.S. aid to bolster Israel’s arms sector rather than to buy weapons from U.S. firms runs counter to his usual approach.”