Ya’alon: $38 Billion Military Aid Deal with US ’Not Enough’

Local Editor

"Israeli" former war minister Moshe Ya'alon joined ex-prime minister Ehud Barak Thursday in slamming Benjamin Netanyahu for the $38 billion military aid deal signed Wednesday with the United States, saying "Israel" should have gotten a bigger payday.

The former war minister, who was effectively ousted from his position earlier this year amid a political crisis that saw Avigdor Liberman take his place, suggested that in October 2015, when he was still in the post, he negotiated a better deal with his then-counterpart Ashton Carter that included a list of capabilities that would have been available to "Israel".

"Put in another way, I don't think $38 billion will provide all the [required] capabilities or meet all our needs," Ya'alon said in a speech at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which he joined in July as a visiting fellow.

"Israel" "will now have to go through a prioritization process in "Israel" to see what we can get and what we prefer to leave [aside]," he added.

Meanwhile, Barak doubled down on claims that Netanyahu and his current government have caused strategic damage to "Israel" and that the military deal was a bad one as a result, giving a series of interviews to Israeli outlets.

In a Channel 10 interview from Boston on Thursday, following a cutting op-ed in The Washington Post in which he accused Bibi of "reckless conduct" that threatens "Israel's" very existence, Barak said that although he would not run in the next elections, he "will operate in many ways to ensure a change in leadership."

In his op-ed, published a day after US and "Israeli" officials signed a massive new military aid deal for "Israel Barak, who also served as Netanyahu's war minister from 2009 to 2013, accused the premier of bungling the negotiations and reaching a package significantly smaller than was originally expected.

"The damage produced by Netanyahu's irresponsible management of the relations with the White House is now fully manifest," Barak wrote. "Israel" will receive $3.8 billion a year - an important contribution to our security but far less than what could have been obtained before the prime minister chose to blatantly interfere with US politics."

On Thursday, Barak said Netanyahu's political meddling in US affairs "cost "Israel" [an additional] $7 billion."

Barak has in the past criticized Netanyahu for appearing before the US Congress in March 2015 to lobby against the Iran nuclear deal that Obama was pushing for, a move that the White House viewed as unprecedented interference by a foreign leader.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team