Israel on Monday inaugurated with its US ally a joint missile defence base on Israeli soil, the first ever, a senior Israeli air force officer said. The new facility, at an undisclosed location in southern Israel, was announced as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was due to meet US President Donald Trump in New York on the fringes of the UN General Assembly.
"We inaugurated, with our partners from the United States Army, an American base, for the first time in Israel," Brigadier General Tzvika Heimowitz, head of Israeli missile defences, told journalists. "An American flag is flying permanently over a US army base situated inside one of our bases."
Heimowitz said the move was not a direct response to any specific incident or immediate threat, but was a combination of "lessons learned" in the 2014 war in Gaza and intelligence analysis of future dangers. "We have many enemies around us, near and far," he said. The outgoing Israel air force chief in June warned neighbours of the "unimaginable" military power at the country's disposal. On September 7 Syria's army accused Israeli warplanes of hitting one of its positions, killing two people in an attack that a monitor said targeted a site where the regime allegedly produces chemical weapons.
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