US bypasses congressional review for month’s second fast-tracked arms sale to Israel
Move suggests that growing discomfort in Washington with Israel’s prosecution of war not yet influencing its near-daily supply of weapons used by the IDF in Gaza
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken fast-tracked the sale of munitions to Israel on Friday, bypassing congressional review over weapons being sent to Jerusalem for its war against Hamas for the second time this month.
The move suggested that growing discomfort in Washington with Israel’s conduct is not yet influencing its near-daily supply of weapons used by the IDF to prosecute the war.
Explaining Blinken’s latest decision to waive congressional review, the US State Department said that the secretary of state determined that an emergency exists that required the immediate sale of 155 millimeter artillery shells and related equipment worth $147.5 million to Israel.
The State Department said Israel requested that fuzes, primers and charges be included in a previous request for the 155 mm shells.
Blinken used the same emergency authority to fast-track the sale of $106 million in roughly 14,000 tank shells to Israel on December 9.
Both moves have come as US President Joe Biden’s request for a nearly $106 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other national security needs remains stalled in Congress, caught up in a debate over US immigration policy and border security. Far-left Democratic lawmakers have spoken of making the proposed $14.3 billion in American assistance to its Mideast ally contingent on concrete steps by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza during the war with Hamas.
The State Department sought to counter potential criticism of the sale on human rights grounds by saying it was in constant touch with Israel to emphasize the importance of minimizing civilian casualties.
Biden officials have also intensified their calls for Israel to scale back the IDF’s high-intensity fighting in recent weeks.
“We continue to strongly emphasize to the government of Israel that they must not only comply with international humanitarian law, but also take every feasible step to prevent harm to civilians,” the State Department said Friday.
“Hamas hides behind civilians and has embedded itself among the civilian population, but that does not lessen Israel’s responsibility and strategic imperative to distinguish between civilians and Hamas terrorists as it conducts its military operations,” the department said. “This type of campaign can only be won by protecting civilians.”
Bypassing Congress with emergency determinations for arms sales is an unusual step that has in the past met resistance from lawmakers, who normally have a period of time to weigh in on proposed weapons transfers and, in some cases, block them.
The US and Israel have maintained an understanding whereby Washington continues to provide backing for Israel’s war against Hamas, while Jerusalem takes steps to ensure that humanitarian aid into Gaza can surge in parallel, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel earlier this month.
But aid delivery in the month since a seven-day truce has been limited, with Israel blaming UN and Egyptian authorities for failing to keep up with its pace of inspections, while the UN insists that substantial aid cannot be safely delivered as long as the fighting continues.
Just 81 trucks carrying humanitarian aid entered Gaza through Israel’s Kerem Shalom and Egypt’s Rafah crossings on Friday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.
Kerem Shalom had been closed for three days until today due to what OCHA says were security incidents, including an IDF drone strike, the seizure of aid by desperate locals and unannounced and uncoordinated prisoner and casualty transfers from Israel.
“The volume of aid remains woefully inadequate,” OCHA said in a statement.
Israel reopened its Kerem Shalom Crossing on December 17 for aid to enter Gaza directly from Israel for the first time since the war’s outbreak.
However, the move hasn’t led to the desired increase in aid delivery.
Two hundred trucks entered Gaza each day of last month’s week-long truce. The daily figure has not come close to that number since. Before the war and the massive humanitarian crisis that it has sparked, roughly 500 trucks of aid were entering Gaza each day.
Last week, Washington withheld its veto from a UN Security Council resolution calling for increased aid.
Netanyahu used a subsequent phone call with US President Joe Biden to thank Washington for its efforts to successfully alter the text to remove a call for an immediate ceasefire.
For his part, Biden used the call to discuss his desire for Israel to scale back its Gaza offensive, the White House said.
A statement from Netanyahu’s office on the call said the premier “clarified that Israel will continue the war until all of its goals are achieved,” which include toppling the Hamas terror group and bringing home the hostages being held by Palestinian terrorists in the Strip.
Blinken said Wednesday that the US will continue to provide assistance to Israel to “ensure that what happened on October 7 can never happen again.”
Privately, visiting Biden Administration officials have told Israel that they expect the phasing to lower intensity fighting to begin in January, two US and Israeli officials told The Times of Israel.
Biden in mid-December warned that Israel was losing global support due to its “indiscriminate bombing” in Gaza.
Israel’s massive aerial and ground campaign has killed over 21,000 people in Gaza, according to the enclave’s Hamas-run health ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants and includes civilians killed by misfired Palestinian rockets. The IDF says it has killed some 8,500 terrorists in the war.
The war broke out on October 7 when Hamas terrorists rampaged through southern communities, killing some 1,200 people — mostly civilians massacred in brutal atrocities — and taking around 240 hostages to Gaza.
US frustration with Netanyahu has expanded to other issues, with Biden reportedly telling the premier in that same phone call last weekend that the Israeli cabinet’s decision to withhold tax revenues from the Palestinian Authority must be resolved.
A US official told the Axios news site that the call was one of the most difficult and “frustrating” since the war’s outbreak. “The feeling was that the president is going out on a limb for Bibi [Netanyahu] every day and when Bibi needs to give something back and take some political risk he is unwilling to do it,” the US official said.
According to the Axios report, “Biden asked Netanyahu to accept” the proposal he himself raised several weeks ago: “to transfer the withheld tax revenues to Norway for safekeeping until an arrangement can be found that will assuage Israel’s concerns that the funds could reach Hamas.”
The PA has accepted this arrangement, the report said, but Netanyahu reportedly tried to walk it back and told Biden he no longer thought it was a good idea.
After a few minutes of conversation, Biden told Netanyahu that he expected him to resolve the issue and that he should deal with the hardliners in his coalition on the matter just like he, the president, deals with political pressure from Congress about the war. “The president added that ‘this conversation is over’ and ended the call,” a second US official told Axios.
The US has long pressed Israel to take steps to boost the PA, arguing that the collapse of the more moderate foil to Hamas would result in Israel being responsible for providing services to roughly three million Palestinians in the West Bank.
Washington also views strengthening the PA as a necessary pre-requisite to a two-state solution — a framework opposed by the current Israeli government.
