US blocks shipment of rifles to Israel over concerns of West Bank settler violence

The White House is concerned the shipment of more than 27,000 rifles intended for Israel’s national police could end up transferred to extremist Israeli settlers.

Israeli security forces deploy at the site of a reported attack in a settler neighbourhood of Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem. Picture: AFP.

The Biden administration is holding back a shipment of more than 27,000 US-made rifles intended for Israel’s national police over concerns they could end up transferred to extremist Israeli settlers in the West Bank, US officials said.

The three cases of firearms, which include M4 and M16 rifles, have been awaiting the administration’s mandated notification to Congress for more than a month. The administration has yet to approve their transfer, as officials and members of Congress press Israel for assurances that they won’t land in the hands of extremists, the officials said.

Officials said the U.S. told the Israeli government this month that it hadn’t offered sufficient assurances that the weapons would only be accessed by the Israeli National Police and incident response teams, and it isn’t yet willing to certify the latest transfer.

The decision to stop the transfer comes after a separate shipment, approved before Hamas’s attack in October, was sent to Israel in recent weeks, the officials said.

An Israeli settler from the Kiryat Arba Jewish settlement reads a holy book as he stands on Palestinian land overlooking the Ibrahimi Mosque and the old city of the West Bank town of Hebron. Picture: AFP.

Since the October 7 Hamas attacks in Israel and the outbreak of the war in Gaza, attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank have doubled, according to the United Nations. Armed settlers in uniforms have shown up in Palestinian villages threatening to kill those who don’t leave, say residents, Israeli peace activists and the U.N. The incidents have prompted more than 1,000 Palestinians from at least 15 communities to flee their homes in the West Bank, according to the U.N. and Israeli human-rights group B’Tselem.

At least 270 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed since October 7, according to Palestinian health ministry figures, including seven earlier this week.

Shortly after Hamas attacked Israel, Israel’s minister for national security Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the police, announced that the government would buy guns to give to civilian security teams for use in the West Bank settlements.

At a fundraiser event this week, President Biden singled out Ben-Gvir by name, saying in a speech that he and the “new folks … don’t want anything remotely approaching a two-state solution,” adding that they want retribution not only against Hamas, but “against all Palestinians.” The U.S. has said it fears that violence in the West Bank could lead to a regional conflict.

Earlier this month, the Biden administration imposed visa bans on individuals thought to have been involved in “undermining peace, security, or stability in the West Bank,” particularly Israeli settlers who have sought to capitalise on growing instability in the region. The State Department said that it had issued the bans because it thought the Israeli government had not done enough to crack down on Israeli extremists.

An aerial view of Katsrin city, an Israeli settlement in the Golan Heights. Picture: AFP.

The Israeli government didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The State Department didn’t respond to a request for comment. After previous sales, Israel has said it had sought to address U.S. concerns.

According to officials familiar with the discussions, the new shipments are being held up over concerns the original sales proposal could see the arms transferred from the Israeli National Police to some of the country’s civil protection units, which are less organised and include some settler groups.

Some members of Congress on the House Foreign Affairs Committee told the administration that the provision in the agreement enabling that transfer should be struck to prevent those weapons from falling into the hands of extremist settlers, particularly amid concerns over the spike in violence, officials said.

The State Department then went back to the Israeli government and said it wanted to see concrete steps that it was working to curtail settler violence before it approves the rifle shipments, the officials said.

Dow Jones