US paused weapons shipment to Israel over possible Rafah offensive

Biden administration officials are concerned about the use of 2000-pound bombs in densely populated areas of Gaza.

An injured Palestinian boy awaits treatment at the Kuwaiti hospital following Israeli strikes in Rafah on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

In Washington’s first formal ­rebuke to Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza, the Biden administration has paused weapons destined for its top Middle East ally, as Israel was mounting new operations in Rafah in southern Gaza.

US officials said they were conducting a review of other weapons sales amid Israel’s operations in Rafah, launched late on Monday, even after Hamas agreed to the rough outlines of a deal that could release hostages for a ceasefire.

Earlier on Tuesday, Israel sent tanks into Rafah and took control of the Gaza side of a key border crossing to Egypt, securing a strategic corridor as negotiations for a truce and hostage releases intensified. That closed a critical gateway for humanitarian assistance for Palestinians, prompting the US to renew calls to reopen the gate.

The Biden administration has repeatedly said that it opposes ­Israel launching a ground operation in Rafah, unless there is a plan to safeguard the more than one million people who have sought safety there.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had said the Rafah operation would go forward “with or without a deal”. Israel has “not fully addressed our concerns”, a senior Biden administration official said.

“As Israeli leaders seemed to approach a decision point on such an operation, we began to carefully review proposed transfers of particular weapons to Israel that might be used in Rafah,” the official said.

“We have paused one shipment of weapons,” which consists of 1800 bombs that weigh 900kg (2000 pounds). The shipment also has 1700 bombs that weigh 225kg (500 pounds).

“We are especially focused on the end-use of the 2000-pound bombs and the impact they could have in dense urban settings as we have seen in other parts of Gaza. We have not made a final determination on how to proceed with this shipment,” the official said.

The official didn’t say who was leading the review, when it would conclude and how the administration was making its assessment.

During a March interview with MSNBC, President Joe Biden warned that an Israeli offensive on Rafah would be a “red line”. “(We) cannot have another 30,000 more Palestinians dead,” he said then. The US decision to pause sales ­appeared to be the first public ­attempt to draw that line amid mounting criticism about the death toll and destruction within Gaza through US-provided weapons. In recent weeks the administration had quietly made changes to its weapons sales to Israel.

A Palestinian youth inspects the damage inside a destroyed building following Israeli bombardment of Rafah's Tal al-Sultan district on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

The US did move forward with the sale of up to 6500 Joint Direct Attack Munitions – kits that enable unguided bombs to be steered to a target – according to officials familiar with the proposed deal. Congress first learned in January about the proposed sale, which is worth as much as $US260m ($396m), but the Biden administration has since that time not moved forward with the deal. The State Department is reviewing that sale, the senior administration official said.

The State Department is ­required to notify congress when the US plans to sell weapons to other countries when the deal rises above specific dollar thresholds. The State Department typically provides information to the House of Representatives foreign affairs and Senate foreign relations committees ahead of those potential arms sales, followed by the formal congressional notification.

In the case of the JDAMs, however, the administration never followed up with the official notification about the sale, triggering an effective pause in the deal.

Since March, the Biden administration has also not advanced the congressional notification process on another $US1bn in weapons deals for Israel that includes tank ammunition, military vehicles and mortar rounds, US officials said.

The Wall Street Journal