Abstract
President Kennedy was the first American president to enunciate commitment to maintaining an arms balance between Israel and its Arab neighbours. He defined the US–Israeli relationship as ‘special’. He told the Israelis that if Israel were invaded, the USA would come to its support. US diplomatic documents show that, in August 1963, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff were still reserved on the question of arms for Israel, but by December 1963 their approach was already positive. In June 1963, Kennedy told his assistants that he favoured staff talks with Israel. While neither the Kennedy nor the Johnson administrations consented to military staff talks, a seminal meeting on the question of the arms balance in the Middle East in fact took place just ten days before Kennedy's assassination in November 1963. Yitzhak Rabin, then Israel's Deputy Chief of Staff, took part in that meeting. This article also discusses the question whether concern over Israel's nuclear policy (the Dimona reactor) influenced American thinking on the development of the US–Israeli defence relationship.
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