WASHINGTON - Israel's close defense ties to the United States could be harmed by a little-noticed provision, buried in a defense appropriations bill passed overwhelmingly last month by the U.S. House of Representatives, that penalizes nations that sell arms to China.
Pro-Israel and Israeli officials insist that the provision, which bans procurement for five years of defense items from any country that sells arms to China, targets European nations courting Asia's pre-eminent military power.
"Israel should not be a target of that legislation," said Tom Neumann, executive director of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.
But that doesn't mean Israel shouldn't be concerned, given the bill's broad language and Israel's reputation as the No. 2 seller of arms to China after Russia, according to a 2004 report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review, a government body that answers to Congress.
Israeli officials say the figures in that report, although widely cited, are out of date.
Still, a ban could cripple Israel's defense industry, which deals extensively with U.S. interests and which is a mainstay of Israel's economy.
"It's more about competitiveness and less to do with China," Neumann said of the U.S. pressure on Israel.
Israel already is paying a price for its relationship with China: In April, it was frozen out of access to information about U.S. plans for its Joint Strike Fighter, a state-of-the-art combat aircraft due for production by 2012.
In a series of high-level meetings between the countries' defense establishments in recent months, Israeli officials have scrambled to assuage recent U.S. anger at Israeli deals with China.
"There's an ongoing dialogue taking place right now to resolve whatever outstanding issues exist, which we hope will be resolved very soon," said an Israeli spokesman who did not want to be further identified because of the sensitivity of the dialogue.
The spokesman pointed to a defense relationship that is thriving in many areas, especially in the manufacture of the Arrow anti-missile missile.
Boeing and Israel Aircraft Industries toasted the Arrow's success last week at a cocktail party on Capitol Hill, an event attended by members of Congress who two weeks earlier had approved the controversial provision.
Pro-Israel lobbyists have a consistent track record of getting Congress to double administration funding requests for the Arrow project, the centerpiece of U.S.-Israel defense cooperation.
That would seem to underscore the claim that the House was aiming for Europe when it referred the bill to the Senate on May 25 in a 390-39 vote. Still, Israel would be unwise to ignore the consequences of continuing to deal with China, experts said.
"Israel's policy of arms sales to China is disgraceful. This has always been a situation where Israel acts like France," said Danielle Pletka, a vice president of the American Enterprise Institute and for 10 years a senior staffer for Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
"We all understand their motivation: A homegrown defense industry is tough to finance, staying on the cutting edge is hard to pay for. But by the same token we could arm Syria and Lebanon or Iran," she said.
In fact, Israel long has complained about U.S. arms sales in the Arab world, but its concerns generally are overruled.
Michael O'Hanlon, a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution, echoed Pletka's remarks on Israel's relationship with China.
"Israel's actions are contributing to a reduction in U.S. security, and if that were ever widely perceived it would so radically change the Israel-U.S. relationship," O'Hanlon said.
Israelis and Europeans tend to believe that U.S.-China tensions are shadow play, O'Hanlon said, but in fact the prospect of a confrontation over the Taiwan Strait is very real.
"There's no partisan divide or intellectual divide on this question on this side of the pond," O'Hanlon said.
The unanimity of anger has allowed the Pentagon in recent months to take punitive steps, including freezing Israel out of the Joint Strike Fighter project.
A central issue of contention was Israel's agreement to upgrade Harpy attack drones that it sold to China in the mid-1990s. The unmanned aircraft "detects, attacks and destroys enemy radar emitters, hitting them with high hit accuracy," the IAI boasts on its Web site.
What the site does not say is that China tested the weapons last year in the Taiwan Strait, the likeliest venue for a U.S.-China confrontation should the Chinese decide to take action against Taiwan, an island that Beijing sees as a renegade province.
O'Hanlon said Israel needs to appreciate that the Israeli and U.S. positions have reversed in recent years: Israel is more secure because of its vast conventional and nonconventional superiority in its region, while the United States, by contrast, feels increasingly insecure since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"The United States is increasingly at risk, even as Israel is at lesser risk," O'Hanlon said.
