Israel and the United States signalled that they were putting disputes over the Iran nuclear deal behind them, announcing resumed talks on U.S. defence aid for Israel as it hosted Washington's top general and a joint air force drill.
The allies had been looking to agree on a 10-year military aid package to extend the current U.S. grants to Israel worth $3 billion annually, which are due to expire in 2017.
But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu froze those negotiations ahead of the July deal reached between Iran and world powers, which Israel deems insufficiently stringent and against which it had lobbied the U.S. Congress.
"With the nuclear deal now moving ahead, Israel is also moving ahead, hoping to forge a common policy with the United states to address the continuing dangers posed by Iran," Ron Dermer, Israel's ambassador to the United States, said in a Facebook post.
"Discussions over a new Memorandum of Understanding between Israel and the United States, which had been on hold for some time, resumed this past week in Washington," he said, using a term for the defence-aid agreement.
The most senior U.S. military officer, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Marine General Joseph Dunford, arrived in Israel on Saturday in his first foreign trip since assuming the post this month.
Israel also launched, at a southern desert base, a two-week air force drill with the United States known as "Blue Flag".
The exercise, held twice a year, "creates a multi-national learning environment, including fictional countries, in which participants can practice planning and execution of large air force operations," the Israeli military said in a statement. It said other countries were involved, but did not name them.
Dermer said Dunford's visit would include defence-aid discussions that would be pursued in Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon's talks in Washington later this month and at a White House meeting between Netanyahu and President Barack Obama next month.
Affirming the strength of ties, Dunford appeared to play down past disputes between the United States and Israel.
"Through all of the ups and downs in a family relationship, the military-to-military relationship has remained strong," he told Yaalon at the Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv.
"The challenges that we face, we face together," Dunford said, after Yaalon listed Iran as Israel's chief regional adversary. "I know the perspective that you have will be very important to us in making sure that what we do, we do most effectively."
Before the suspension, the two sides were close to a new package of grants worth $3.6 billion to $3.7 billion a year, U.S. and Israeli officials have said. They have predicted that the amount could rise further as Israel argues that it needs more aid to off-set a likely windfall for Iran in sanctions relief which might be used to finance anti-Israel guerrillas.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here