Israel not only stays reluctant to sell weapons to Ukraine but also does not allow to re-export them from the stocks of Ukraine's partners for almost 16 months of the russian all-out invasion. This position has been reasonably criticized: just the fact that the Kremlin supplies weapons to iran, an adversary who claims to destroy Israel as a state, and officially accepts delegations from Hamas, Fatah, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement in Moscow, seems like a logical reason for Israel to not put a hold on weapons aimed at russian forces.
Be that as it may, Israel chose a careful stance and only provides humanitarian aid. "The policy of the Defense Ministry and the political leadership on this issue is balanced, considered and clear, and prohibits [weapon - ed.] exports to Ukraine," says Yair Kulas, head of the export coordination department SIBAT of the Israel Ministry of Defense, in an interview to Calcalist.
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This talk reveals some aspects of how Israeli weapons are exported in general. And the main factor is the approval by the Director of Security of the Defense Establishment (DSDE) and by the IDF's Information Security Department. Their main task is to make sure Israeli weapons are never pointed at Israeli people, one way or another. This process is also controlled by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Defense Exports Control Agency (DECA).
In some cases, potential export deals had to go through the Supreme Court for a green light.
Among the reasons to reject an export contract, Kulas said there are the level of diplomatic relations with the target country, potential civil conflicts and regional crises, indications of human rights abuses, and various political nuances. Particularly careful the Ministry is about a chance someone reverse-engineers Israeli weapons. Not only the current condition of the country is evaluated but its past as well.
"We examine the customer carefully, investigate his history, get an impression of whether there is copying or other problematic behavior in the record," Yair Kulas noted, and added that if someone comes asking for one particular system, that is a red flag of malintent.
He also recalled that due to strict regulations, sometimes big potential deals fall apart which Kulas thinks should have been signed: "So yes, I get very angry, drink water and relax. It's part of life and it's part of the rules of the game".
At the same time, on the part of Defense Express, it would be fair to remind how Israel exported weapons to russia. According to SIPRI, IAI I-View and IAI Searcher were sold in 2009-2013. The Searcher version, by the way, was not just procured but also came with a license on domestic production, it is now made in russia and called Forpost.
Could the russian federation hand some technologies it used for production of this drone over to iran? – we'll leave that an open question.
However, we should not forget that an Israeli weapon is also produced in Ukraine under license. The Tavor rifle has been made in variants since 2009 under the names Fort-221/222/224.
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