The economic crisis has forced cutbacks in the defense budget to the danger point, Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin said today. Any further reductions, he warned, will reduce the ammunition supply to a point lower than it was when the Yom Kippur War broke out in October, 1973, and Israel was forced to depend on an emergency munitions supply airlift from the United States to survive.
Rabin spoke at a conference of the United Kibbutz Movement. Premier Shimon Peres, in a radio interview yesterday, also expressed concern over the security effects of defense budget cuts. But, he said, the overall economic situation made the cuts essential.
Rabin observed that no Defense Minister in the past had taken the risks forced on him, such as large-scale dismissals from the armed forces.
“I shall go down in history as the big axe wielder of Israel. We shall have to fire between 7,000 and 11,000 people in the defense establishment and the civilian-staffed production units,” he said.
The Defense Minister cautioned that it was impossible to forecast accurately when another war might break out. He said he was off base just before the 1967 Six-Day War when he told the Cabinet of Premier Levi Eshkol that he thought Egypt, then ruled by Gamal Abdel Nasser, was too preoccupied with Nasser’s military adventure in Yemen to go to war against Israel.
Developments occur faster than the time needed to prepare for them, Rabin said.
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