JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Saturday, March 15, 2025

Biden administration is sending $1 billion more in weapons, ammo to Israel, congressional aides say

by

304 days ago
20240515
President Joe Biden speaks at the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies' 30th annual gala, Tuesday, May 14, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

President Joe Biden speaks at the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies' 30th annual gala, Tuesday, May 14, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion has told key law­mak­ers it would send more than $1 bil­lion in ad­di­tion­al arms and am­mu­ni­tion to Is­rael, three con­gres­sion­al aides said Tues­day. But it was not im­me­di­ate­ly known how soon the weapons would be de­liv­ered.

It’s the first arms ship­ment to Is­rael to be re­vealed since the ad­min­is­tra­tion put an­oth­er arms trans­fer, con­sist­ing of 3,500 bombs of up to 2,000 pounds each, on hold this month. The Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion, cit­ing con­cern for civil­ian ca­su­al­ties in Gaza, has said it paused that bomb trans­fer to keep Is­rael from us­ing those par­tic­u­lar mu­ni­tions in its of­fen­sive in the crowd­ed south­ern Gaza city of Rafah.

The pack­age dis­closed Tues­day in­cludes about $700 mil­lion for tank am­mu­ni­tion, $500 mil­lion in tac­ti­cal ve­hi­cles and $60 mil­lion in mor­tar rounds, the con­gres­sion­al aides said. They spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss an arms trans­fer that has not yet been made pub­lic.

There was no im­me­di­ate in­di­ca­tion of when the arms would be sent. Two con­gres­sion­al aides said the ship­ment is not part of the long-de­layed for­eign aid pack­age that Con­gress passed and Pres­i­dent Joe Biden signed last month. It wasn’t known if the ship­ment was the lat­est tranche from an ex­ist­ing arms sale or some­thing new.

The Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion has come un­der crit­i­cism from both sides of the po­lit­i­cal spec­trum over its mil­i­tary sup­port for Is­rael’s now sev­en-month-old war against Hamas in Gaza — at a time when Biden is bat­tling for re­elec­tion against for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump.

Some of Biden’s fel­low De­moc­rats have pushed him to lim­it trans­fers of of­fen­sive weapons to Is­rael to pres­sure the U.S. al­ly to do more to pro­tect Pales­tin­ian civil­ians. Protests on col­lege cam­pus­es around the U.S. have dri­ven home the mes­sage this spring.

Re­pub­li­can law­mak­ers have seized on the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s pause on the bomb trans­fers, say­ing any less­en­ing of U.S. sup­port for Is­rael — its clos­est al­ly in the Mid­dle East — weak­ens that coun­try as it fights Hamas and oth­er Iran-backed groups. In the House, they are plan­ning to ad­vance a bill this week to man­date the de­liv­ery of of­fen­sive weapon­ry for Is­rael.

De­spite the one-time sus­pen­sion of a bomb ship­ment, Biden and ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cials have made clear they will con­tin­ue oth­er weapons de­liv­er­ies and over­all mil­i­tary sup­port to Is­rael, which is the largest re­cip­i­ent of U.S. mil­i­tary aid.

Biden will see to it that “Is­rael has all of the mil­i­tary means it needs to de­fend it­self against all of its en­e­mies, in­clud­ing Hamas,” na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty spokesman John Kir­by told re­porters Mon­day. “For him, this is very straight­for­ward: He’s go­ing to con­tin­ue to pro­vide Is­rael with all of the ca­pa­bil­i­ties it needs, but he does not want cer­tain cat­e­gories of Amer­i­can weapons used in a par­tic­u­lar type of op­er­a­tion in a par­tic­u­lar place. And again, he has been clear and con­sis­tent with that.”

The Wall Street Jour­nal first re­port­ed the plans for the $1 bil­lion weapons pack­age to Is­rael.

In re­sponse to House Re­pub­li­cans’ plan to move for­ward with a bill to man­date the de­liv­ery of of­fen­sive weapons for Is­rael, the White House said Tues­day that Biden would ve­to the bill if it were to pass Con­gress.

The bill has prac­ti­cal­ly no chance in the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic-con­trolled Sen­ate. But House De­moc­rats are some­what di­vid­ed on the is­sue, and rough­ly two dozen have signed on­to a let­ter to the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion say­ing they were “deeply con­cerned about the mes­sage” sent by paus­ing the bomb ship­ment.

One of the let­ter’s sign­ers, New York Rep. Ritchie Tor­res, said he would like­ly vote for the bill, de­spite the White House’s op­po­si­tion.

“I have a gen­er­al rule of sup­port­ing pro-Is­rael leg­is­la­tion un­less it in­cludes a poi­son pill — like cuts to do­mes­tic pol­i­cy,” he said.

In ad­di­tion to the writ­ten ve­to threat, the White House has been in touch with var­i­ous law­mak­ers and con­gres­sion­al aides about the leg­is­la­tion, ac­cord­ing to an ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cial.

“We strong­ly, strong­ly op­pose at­tempts to con­strain the Pres­i­dent’s abil­i­ty to de­ploy U.S. se­cu­ri­ty as­sis­tance con­sis­tent with U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ob­jec­tives,” White House press sec­re­tary Karine Jean-Pierre said this week, adding that the ad­min­is­tra­tion plans to spend “every last cent” ap­pro­pri­at­ed by Con­gress in the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty sup­ple­men­tal pack­age that was signed in­to law by Biden last month.

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Stephen Groves, Lisa Mas­caro and Aamer Mad­hani con­tributed.

WASH­ING­TON (AP) —

USUS President Joe BidenInternational Israel


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored