NOS News•today, 07:52
The United States will stop supplying weapons to Israel if plans for an Israeli ground offensive in Rafah go ahead. President Biden announced in an interview with CNN that he informed Israeli Prime Minister Natanyahu of his decision by telephone.
“If they go into Rafah, I’m not going to deliver the weapons that have been used so far in Rafah, in the cities,” Biden said. “Civilians have been killed in Gaza by these kinds of bombs and the way they are dealing with urban areas.”
Biden did say that the United States is still committed to the defense of Israel and, for example, will continue to supply ammunition for Israel’s Iron Dome missile shield. “We are not turning our hands away from Israel’s security, but we are turning away from the possibility of waging war in that area.”
Delivery suspended
Biden’s comments come shortly after Defense Secretary Austin’s announcement that an ammunition supply to Israel has been put on hold due to the planned Israeli offensive in Rafah. Austin reported to Congress that delivery has been delayed by at least two weeks.
“After evaluation, we paused one delivery of heavy ammunition,” he said. “No final decision has yet been made on the progress of that delivery.”
Austin declined to go into details, but American media reports that it concerns 1,800 2,000-pounders and 1,700 500-pounders, which will be delayed at least two weeks. Israel uses such bombs to bomb underground and fortified Hamas bunkers, but Austin emphasized that this can also cause a lot of collateral damage by wiping out homes.
It is the first time that the Biden administration has taken such concrete steps to prevent a major attack on Rafah. The US government’s criticism of a proposed Israeli raid on Rafah has been growing for weeks, but Biden did not want to hear about actual sanctions for the Netanyahu government.
Political opponents say it is shameful that Biden is denying weapons to ally Israel. That only encourages the country’s opponents, Republicans warn. “This is obscene. Absurd. Give Israel what it needs,” Senator Lindsey Graham urged Austin. The Israeli ambassador to the UN calls it a disappointing and frustrating decision.
However, Biden’s supporters believe that the decision does not go far enough. “The US provides billions in military aid,” argued progressive Senator Bernie Sanders. “We can no longer be complicit in Netanyahu’s horrific war against the Palestinian people.”
Billions in support
The US is Israel’s most important ally. The country has been donating weapons and ammunition to Israel for decades, amounting to around three billion dollars annually. The American think tank Council on Foreign Relations calculated that it has made “more than a hundred transfers of military aid” since Israel’s invasion of Gaza on October 7.
This includes the supply of tanks, bombs, rockets and small arms. The supply of new F-15 fighter planes, worth 18 billion dollars, was also considered.
It has not happened in the past 40 years that the US has publicly denied Israel military assistance. In 1982, Ronald Reagan halted the supply of cluster bombs following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
The bond between the US and Israel has been under strain for some time:
US ties with Israel under pressure
