Israel sold more weapons to other countries in 2024 than ever, government officials said on Wednesday, even as it fought on multiple fronts in the longest war in its history.
Israeli producers signed contracts to export about $14.8 billion in weapons last year, up from a previous record high of $13 billion in 2023, according to new data from Israel’s Defense Ministry.
The figures reflect the remarkable speed at which Israel has ramped up its wartime production and sought new markets in Europe, where demand is growing for arms to protect against Russian aggression. They are also a rare respite in a domestic economy that has struggled during the war.
Some of the weapons were delivered in 2024, and others are part of arms deals that will take longer to complete. But the overall increase in sales came while Israeli forces were launching offensives in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, and bombarding Iran and Yemen, in what Defense Minister Israel Katz called on Wednesday “a difficult and complex year of war.”
Even as it was shipping weapons abroad, Israel also received at least $17.9 billion in military aid, including weapons, from the United States in the 12 months after Hamas led a deadly invasion on Oct. 7, 2023. Researchers have called that a conservative estimate.
Compared with American arms sales abroad — which accounted for at least $200 billion in the fiscal year that ended in September — Israel’s exports are small.
But more than half of its sales last year — 54 percent — went to Europe, which is looking to boost its defense spending and quickly refill military stockpiles diminished by the war in Ukraine amid concern that the United States is no longer a reliable security partner.
“There is a real need in the world — this conflict in Israel is not the only conflict,” Boaz Levy, chief executive of the government-owned Israel Aerospace Industries, said in a recent interview.
European leaders have become increasingly agitated with the war in Gaza, which could threaten Israel’s sales.
On Tuesday, Spain’s Defense Ministry said it had canceled a $325 million deal for anti-tank missiles built by a subsidiary of Israel’s government-owned Rafael Advanced Defense Systems as part of a “gradual disconnection of Israeli technology.”
A spokesman for Rafael did not respond to a request for comment.
President Trump has also questioned Israel’s strategy in Gaza, prompting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to declare last month that “we will have to wean ourselves off of American security aid.”
Experts predict it would be years, if ever, before Israel could end its reliance on U.S. arms.
In the months after Hamas’s attacks, the United States sent Israel air-defense systems, precision-guided munitions, artillery shells, tank rounds, small arms, Hellfire missiles used by drones and disposable shoulder-fired rockets.
In February, Mr. Trump bypassed congressional approval to speed sales of more than $12 billion in arms to Israel over the coming decade, including 2,000-pound bombs that the Biden administration had withheld over concerns they would indiscriminately kill civilians in Gaza.
Throughout last year, 48 percent of Israel’s foreign sales were made up of missiles, rockets and air-defense systems, the country’s Defense Ministry said. Israel’s data did not detail specific deals, and it was not clear why it would sell some of the same types of weapons it needs now to fight Hamas.
Zain Hussain, who researches arms transfers at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said Israel had relied “quite considerably” on American military aid. “That has helped to take away a lot of the burden from Israel’s arms industry,” he added.
But other experts noted that some arms that take years to produce wouldn’t be immediately available for Israel, anyway, and that it would be unwise in the long term to renege on foreign sales, which could risk economic and diplomatic ties. Additionally, at least some of the weapons that Israel sold potentially have different features from what its own military uses, said Bradley Bowman, a military expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington.
In interviews, Israeli officials said they decided after the 50-day war with Hamas in 2014 to keep weapons assembly lines in slow but constant motion so that they could ramp up quickly when necessary — as they did immediately after the October 2023 attacks. That is how Israel has largely avoided production shortfalls that Western defense manufacturers have faced since Russia invaded Ukraine.
Still, Israel’s constant combat since 2023 appears to have drained its stockpiles of some of its most needed defenses.
Analysts at the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey concluded that Israel ran short of missile interceptors last October, when at least 30 Iranian ballistic missiles landed unhindered in the southern part of the country. Within days, the United States had sent one of its advanced THAAD air-defense systems to Israel.
Yet, Israeli producers continued apace with sales of air-defense systems to Europe.
This year, Germany expects to receive Arrow batteries, which can intercept long-range ballistic missiles, as part of a $4.3 billion sale in September 2023, Israel’s single largest foreign defense deal.
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Lara Jakes, based in Rome, reports on diplomatic and military efforts by the West to support Ukraine in its war with Russia. She has been a journalist for nearly 30 years.
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