Explaining arms hold up, US defense chief says Israel must account for Rafah civilians
Austin indicates messaging to Israel regarding US concerns over offensive hasn’t sunk in, but adds decision on transfer of high payload munitions not final
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
US President Joe Biden’s decision to hold up delivery of high payload munitions to Israel was taken in the context of Israel’s plans to carry out an offensive in Rafah that Washington opposes without new civilian safeguards, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stressed at a Senate hearing on Wednesday.
The Biden administration on Tuesday night confirmed reports that it had recently held up a large shipment of 2,000- and 500-pound bombs that it feared Israel might use in a major ground operation in the densely populated southern Gaza city of Rafah.
This is the first time since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war that the US has held up a weapons shipment for the IDF, which it has been supplying on a near-constant basis since October 7.
“We’ve been very clear… from the very beginning that Israel shouldn’t launch a major attack into Rafah without accounting for and protecting the civilians that are in that battle space,” Austin told the Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, Wednesday. “And again, as we have assessed the situation, we have paused one shipment of high payload munitions.”
However, he added, “We’ve not made a final determination on how to proceed with that shipment.”
Austin was berated by Republicans on the committee for the administration’s decision.
“If we stop weapons necessary to destroy the enemies of the State of Israel at a time of great peril, we will pay a price,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham.
“This is obscene. It is absurd. Give Israel what they need,” Graham said, adding it wasn’t for Washington to second-guess how Israel fought a war against Hamas militants bent on Israel’s destruction.
Washington adamantly opposes a major offensive in Rafah, convinced that there is no way Israel could conduct one while ensuring the safety of the million-plus Palestinians sheltering there.
The US held a pair of virtual meetings with top Israeli officials in recent months to express concerns regarding a potential Rafah operation and to present alternatives for how Israel could target Hamas in the city without conducting a full-scale invasion.
Those talks will continue, but the White House determined that they were insufficient in getting its concerns across, a senior Biden administration official told The Times of Israel on Tuesday night.
The review resulted in the pausing last week of the weapons’ shipment of 1,800 2,000-pound bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs, the official revealed, noting that the White House was particularly concerned that Israel would use the 2,000-pound bombs in densely populated Rafah as it has in other parts of Gaza.
The senior official also appeared to confirm a report that the US had delayed a sale of Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) to Israel but clarified that this transaction was in a much earlier stage than the shipment of heavy bombs it held up last week.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters on Wednesday that the US was reviewing the status of other near-term arms shipments to Israel.
IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari appeared on Wednesday to minimize the seemingly unprecedented holdup, saying allies resolve any disagreements “behind closed doors.”
Behind those doors, though, Axios reported that senior Israeli officials have expressed “deep frustration” with the Biden administration over the weapons shipment pause, warning that it could jeopardize the hostage talks.
The news site cited who source saying that Jerusalem wasn’t just frustrated by the freeze but also by the White House’s decision to leak the move to the press. It was Israeli officials who were first cited as having leaked the decision last week, though.
“It’s rich that some Israeli officials are complaining about ‘leaks’ when it was Israeli officials who leaked this in the first place,” a US official told Axios.
For their part, the Israeli sources told the news site that Jerusalem is concerned that Hamas will not be willing to compromise in the hostage talks when it sees the US increasing pressure on Israel, adding that the pressure should be applied against the terror group instead.
Relatedly, on Tuesday, several Biden administration spokespeople signaled their initial approval of the operation launched by Israel early Tuesday morning to take over the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. The operation led to the closure of the crossing — one of the main gates used to funnel aid into Gaza.
For months, Netanyahu has been declaring that Israeli troops will carry out an operation to root out the final Hamas strongholds in Rafah, regardless of whether an agreement is reached in the ongoing hostage talks.
According to Israeli defense officials, four of Hamas’s six remaining battalions are in the city, along with members of the terror group’s leadership and a significant number of the hostages it abducted from Israel during the Oct. 7 onslaught that sparked the war in Gaza, when the Hamas terror organization killed 1,200 in Israel and took 252 people hostage, mostly civilians.
One hundred and twenty-eight abducted hostages remain in Gaza — not all of them alive. Two hundred and sixty-seven Israeli soldiers have been killed during the ground offensive against Hamas and amid operations along the Gaza border.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 34,000 people in the Strip have been killed in the fighting so far, a figure that cannot be independently verified and includes some 13,000 Hamas gunmen Israel says it has killed in battle. Israel also says it killed some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Times of Israel staff and Reuters contributed to this report.
