Israel–United States military relations
Military relations between Israel and the United States have been consistently close, reflecting shared security interests in the Middle East. Israel is designated as a major non-NATO ally by the U.S. government. A major purchaser and user of U.S. military equipment, Israel is also involved in the joint development of military technology and regularly engages in joint military exercises involving United States and other forces. The relationship has deepened gradually over time, though, as Alan Dowty puts it, it was "not a simple linear process of growing cooperation, but rather a series of tendentious bargaining situations with different strategic and political components in each." Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign aid: until February 2022, the United States had provided Israel US$ 150 billion (non-inflation-adjusted) in bilateral assistance. In 1999, the US government signed a Memorandum of Understanding through which it committed to providing Israel with at least US$2.67 billion in military aid annually, for the following ten years; in 2009, the annual amount was raised to US$3 billion; and in 2019, the amount was raised again, now standing at a minimum of US that the US is committed to providing Israel each year. In addition, the only foreign military installations on Israeli soil are US bases, including an AN/TPY-2 early missile warning radar station on Mt. Keren. Overview Following the Second World War, the “new postwar era witnessed an intensive involvement of the United States in the political and economic affairs of the Middle East, in contrast to the hands-off attitude characteristic of the prewar period. "[U]nder Truman the United States had to face and define its policy in all three sectors that provided the root causes of American interests in the region: the Soviet threat, the birth of Israel, and petroleum.” During the first twenty years following Israel's independence, United States policy in the Middle East was driven by two major policy concerns: The prevention of an arms race in the Near East, and the prevention of the spread of Soviet influence. The Truman Administration promulgated the Tripartite Declaration of 1950 for these reasons, as well as to guarantee the territorial status quo determined by 1949 Armistice Agreements. Israel's main military patron at the time was France, which supported Israel by providing it with advanced military equipment and technology, such as the Dassault Mystère fighter-bomber aircraft. Initially, the U.S. government resisted pressure by Israel and Arab countries in the region to sell them advanced weapons. In response to the supply of advanced fighter aircraft by the USSR to Iraq and the United Arab Republic, the U.S. government agreed to sell MIM-23 Hawk anti-aircraft missiles to Israel in 1962, as a "specific action designed to meet a specific situation" which "by no means constitutes change in U.S. policy in area.". The Hawk system was approved on the grounds that it was a "purely defensive" weapon. Later, when Jordan threatened to turn to the USSR for weapons, the U.S. agreed to sell tanks and jet aircraft to Jordan