Khaled Yousef and Serdar Dincel<\/p>\n
19 September 2026\u2022Update: 19 September 2026<\/p>\n
Israel plans to ask for US additional defense capabilities as a “compensation” after Washington agreed to sell F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, according to Israeli media.<\/p>\n
Tel Aviv will seek to purchase weapons systems that US President Donald Trump’s administration had previously declined to approve, Israeli news website Walla reported on Friday.<\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s military focus extends beyond advanced fighter jets and next-generation stealth aircraft to space-based weapons and the development and production of interceptor aircraft, the outlet said.<\/p>\n
Weapons to be demanded by Israeli officials also include “bunker-busting munitions and underground systems capable of operating deep beneath rocky mountains,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n
The move is intended to secure a \u201ccompensation\u201d from Washington following the F-35 deal with Riyadh, the website said.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, the US State Department approved a possible $24.3 billion sale of 48 F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n
The package also includes 49 Pratt & Whitney F135-PW-100 engines, along with cryptographic equipment, electronic warfare support, training and logistics packages, according to a notification sent to the US Congress.<\/p>\n
If completed, the deal would make Saudi Arabia the first Arab country to acquire F-35 fighter jets, while Israel is currently the only operator of the aircraft in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Israeli officials have repeatedly criticized Saudi Arabia over its refusal to normalize relations with Tel Aviv before the establishment of a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders, a condition which the international community supports while Israel continues to reject.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Khaled Yousef and Serdar Dincel 19 September 2026\u2022Update: 19 September 2026 Israel plans to ask for US additional…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43,180804],"class_list":["post-620907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news","tag-sitekeywords"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}