Athens, Greece – Greece is interested in jointly developing weapons with Israel, Greek officials have told Al Jazeera.“We’re an excellent customer of Israeli systems,” Angelos Syrigos, chairman of the Greek parliament’s Defence Affairs Committee, told Al Jazeera. “The leap in our defence relationship will happen when there’s co-production of defence systems and common planning.”Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of listThe relationship is strengthening as Israel stands accused of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.On December 4, Greece’s Defence Affairs Committee approved the purchase of 36 PULS rocket artillery systems at a cost of $760m, the largest Greek acquisition of Israeli weapons to date.The medium-range air defence system is to form part of Greece’s Shield of Achilles, a 2.8-billion-euro ($3.3bn) layered air defence umbrella announced last year.Syrigos said that if co-production were on the table, the remainder of that budget could be devoted to Israeli systems. (Al Jazeera)Greece is nominally a member of the European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI) formed by Germany in 2022 as a vehicle to sell mostly German air defence systems such as Iris-T and Skyranger. But Greece is not known to have entered into talks to buy those systems.In contrast, Greece’s Ministry of National Defence last month formed negotiating committees to buy three additional missile defence systems, Spyder, Barak and David’s Sling, produced by the Israel-owned Rafael and Israeli Aerospace Industries, worth a potential 3.1 billion euros ($3.5bn). Advertisement The three systems, comprising short, medium and long-range air defence against airborne threats including ballistic missiles, would complete the Shield of Achilles.Greece and Israel are …
