BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Israel welcomes the continuing operation of the UN Register of Conventional Arms and the efforts made by the UN Member States of the Register to make this significant measure for confidence, trust and security building between States, as relevant and universal as possible, taking into account national, regional and global security concerns of all. Convinced of the importance of the adherence to the Register and its specific contribution to regional and global stability and security, Israel responds to the Register annually, since its foundation in 1992, according to its categories on major conventional arms. Israel believes that consolidating the existing UN Register, by reaching out to States in problematic regions such as the Middle East and convincing them to adhere to it, should be our first priority. In our view, the Register should remain simple and focused on CSBMs that will promote openness, indicate peaceful intentions and support the establishment of good relations between neighbors and the avoidance of unnecessary arms races caused by strategic miscalculations. Israel supports the multilateral and bilateral cooperation necessary to eradicate all aspects of the illicit trafficking and proliferation of conventional arms. Israel faces daily attacks by terrorist organizations that intentionally and indiscriminately target its civilian population and civilian infrastructure, including its civil aviation. We urge member states of the UN Register to focus their preventive measures, individually and collectively, on terrorism in all its forms and especially on the illicit trade and trafficking of weapons and munitions such as MANPADS, Short Range Rockets and Improvised Explosive Devices. In this regard, we need to take effective steps to prevent the illicit trafficking of launching systems, munitions and critical components for assembling explosives. In the context of arms control initiatives that supplement the efforts made by the international community on UNREG, Israel constructively participates in the international negotiations on the enlargement of the CCW to deal with the humanitarian problems caused by the indiscriminate and irresponsible use of certain conventional weapons; as it did with regard to APLs, Blinding Lasers, AVLs, ERWs and other munitions including cluster munitions. Israel, being a party to the CCW also maintains its unilateral moratorium on the sale, export and transfer of any APLs (valid until July 2017, with a view to extending it for an additional three years). Furthermore, Israel specifically views the illicit trade in SALW, MANPADS, rockets and mortars, in all its aspects, and their misuse as an imminent threat to security and stability, which affects and harms civilian population and societies, deplores development and post conflict reconstruction and rehabilitation. In this regard, Israel took part in the negotiations of the Working Group under the UNPOA on Tracing Illicit SALW and follows the operational guidelines of the international instrument adopted by the UNGA in December 2005 to enable states to identify and trace, in a timely and reliable manner, illicit transfers of SALW. Israel welcomes the adoption of the UN Arms Trade Treaty and views it as an important step in the international community's fight against the illegal arms trade, including the transfer of arms to terrorist groups and to countries that support them as well as to transnational crime organizations Israel attributes importance to the Treaty, which strengthens the international norms and standards, giving national tools for arms trade control, while taking into consideration national security concerns. Israel has taken an active role in the development of the ATT and voted in favor of the UN General Assembly Resolution in April 2013 which adopted it. Israel signed the treaty on 18 December 2014. Israel's 2007 Defense Export Control Act regulates the export of equipment, technology and services, based mainly on the Munitions List of the Wassenaar Arrangement (WA). Dual use items, based on the WA dual use list, are also regulated within the legal framework of the Act, as well as under a ministerial order of the Minister of Economy. The Act provides a legal framework for registration of defense exporters and licensing of defense export .The legislation formalized an inter-agency process for issuing marketing and export licenses. It also sets out an enforcement mechanism which includes both criminal and administrative penalties. The above-mentioned restrictions and prohibitions on exports include, inter alia: - States, groups or individuals under UNSC arms embargo - non-state entities or state agencies unauthorized by the State to receive the export; - subversive and underground groups or areas of ongoing internal armed conflicts; - places where there is an imminent risk that arms might be internally diverted, illicitly proliferated and re-transferred or fall in the hands of terrorists or entities and states that support or sponsor them. Israel's strategic situation in the region and the lack of reciprocity in military transparency and openness from its neighboring countries, makes it very difficult to support the enlargement of the Register to also apply to military holdings and procurement through national production. Even more so, it is premature for Israel at this stage, to support advanced military transparency such as adjusting the existing seven categories of the Register to include power projection capabilities and force multipliers or information on transfers of military technology. Advanced transparency (that would encompass military holdings and indigenous production capabilities, or force projection and multipliers as well as advanced military technology), can only prove stabilizing if established in the framework of regional security and arms control regimes, mutually verified and based on the respected principles of reciprocity and comprehensiveness, normalization of political-military relations. Israel supports the step by step approach in exchanging information on military affairs; starting with regional responding on an annual basis to the present UN Register of Conventional Arms and then evolving, based on sustainable improvement in the security environment, into a more advanced transparency concept, as appropriate and necessary, in the framework of confidence and security building measures in the region, that is needed now more than ever before. Israel views the UNREG, its conceptual and practical development and lessons learned, as an essential instrument in the evolvement of the ATT. Israel supports cooperation with other countries in consolidating the provisions of the Register and its universalization.

Israel’s policy on reporting conventional arms transfers is to report the departure or arrival of relevant military equipment from or to its territory.