Biden pauses bombs shipment to Israel over humanitarian concerns in Gaza

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration has paused the shipment of 3,500 bombs to Israel over concerns they could be used in a major military operation in Rafah, where more than 1 million refugees have been sheltering.

President Joe Biden has been grappling with a pledge to support Israel militarily no matter what and concerns that the U.S. ally is not doing enough to protect civilian lives in Gaza.

Biden’s administration began a review of certain weapons transfers to Israel last month, a senior U.S. official said. The president then paused a shipment of 1,800 2,000-lb bombs and 1,700 500-lb bombs last week, as Israel ramped up plans for a ground invasion of the southern Gaza city.

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The pause came amid a push from Democratic lawmakers to obtain fresh assurances the ally is not violating U.S. policy and international humanitarian law in Gaza and on the heels of a bipartisan bill that Congress passed and the president signed authorizing more military aid to Israel.

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The White House reiterated on Tuesday that Biden’s support for Israel is ironclad. And the president has himself said there is no red line over which he would cut off all aid to Israel.

But with Israel drawing closer to making a decision on Rafah, the Biden’s administration says its concerns about humanitarian access have not been fully addressed.

Biden’s administration was supposed to issue a report to Congress on Wednesday assessing Israel’s assurances that it was not intentionally targeting civilians in its war against Hamas, before acknowledging that it was likely to miss the self-imposed deadline by a day or more.

The promise of a report came as Biden faced pressure from lawmakers within his party to reconsider arms shipments to Israel. He said in a February memorandum that did not mention Israel that his administration would collect “credible and reliable written assurances” from countries the U.S. gives or sells weapons to that they are adhering to U.S. policy and following international humanitarian law.

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Biden also pledged to “provide periodic congressional reports to enable meaningful oversight.”

“Such remediation could include actions from refreshing the assurances to suspending any further transfers of defense articles or, as appropriate, defense services,” the policy says. U.S. policy explicitly prevents the transfer of arms that “risk facilitating or otherwise contributing to violations of human rights or international humanitarian law.”

“If a transfer had previously been authorized and circumstances have changed in ways that would materially increase the risk of any of the negative consequences listed above, the United States will re-assess and, as appropriate, review options for ceasing the transfer of or support for a previous authorization,” the Biden administration policy says.

In a letter to Biden last Friday, House Armed Services Committee member Rep. Chris Deluzio, D-Pa., and House Foreign Affairs Committee member Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., pushed for fresh assurances from Israel. The letter that was signed by 88 Democrats.

Palestinians rescue a man from under the rubble of al-Qadri family residence, which was struck by Israeli bombardment in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip late on May 7, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the militant group Hamas.

Rep. Madeline Dean, D-Pa., and Rep. Ami Bera, D-Calif., were among those who signed, arguing there is sufficient evidence that Israel has broken international law by restricting aid from entering Gaza and urging the Biden administration to consider suspending offensive weapons transfers in response.

“The stakes are grave for us, for the United States of America,” said Dean, who serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “We can be two things at one time — we can be a great ally and supporter of Israel, even as we can be critical of how this war has been prosecuted. One of my biggest critiques has to do with humanitarian aid. The inability to get adequate humanitarian aid is grave.”

Bera, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, said he too will be looking “to see if necessary humanitarian aid is being blocked… I’m going to be worried about starvation, lack of water — those are things that very much are preventable.”

“Listening to the president’s words right now,” he added, “he shares the same concern about humanitarian aid getting to the folks, which is why I think he’s been pretty direct with Prime Minister Netanyahu.”

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Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said he will be “particularly focused” on what the administration’s report says about Israel’s cooperation with humanitarian aid efforts.

“If there was full cooperation, why do we need to build a pier in the eastern Mediterranean and deploy people from Virginia and spend a whole lot of money to build a pier?” he said.

Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., a member of the progressive “Squad” who has been critical of the administration’s approach to Israel, said what she hopes comes out of the report and what she expects to come out of it are likely to be “very, very different.”

“We have been talking about violations of international law and every single time that we think we’re doing something on accountability, we see that Netanyahu has no respect for accountability,” she said. “So I expect that the report is going to show a lot of the ways that us transferring arms to them has actually unfortunately resulted in the killing of civilians.”

But once Congress has the report, she added, she hopes that “we actually do something with that information and really asses how we move forward.”

“How (Biden) responds to it will really determine how he is seen moving forward,” she said. “What you do with that information will be very telling of how people see your leadership moving forward.”

Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Tuesday that he doesn’t want to speculate on the results of the report, but added: “I don’t think it’s going to restrict the general support from the United States to Israel.”

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Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., Foreign Affairs Committee member and one of only two Democratic senators to vote against the foreign aid bill over concerns about Israel aid, said it is “incredibly important” that the administration produce a report that brings “the law and the facts to bear in a full and competent manner.”

“I hope the administration does not delay,” Merkly said. “We are closely tied to a devastating conflict that has cascading humanitarian disaster.”

It is not entirely clear when the Biden administration intends to submit the report.

State Department spokesman Matt Miller said at a Tuesday afternoon briefing that the administration was “trying very hard” to meet its promised timeline.

“It’s possible it slips just a little bit, but we are trying to get it done by tomorrow,” he said.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday before the delay that the White House takes its obligations to Congress seriously and plans to meet them.

“We will always review our Gaza policy. And … if that policy needs to change based on events, then we won’t be shy about changing it,” Kirby added.

Biden warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an early April call that the U.S. could make policy changes if the country did not take concrete steps to address his administration’s humanitarian concerns.

In a briefing with reporters on Tuesday, Kirby said”a lot more work” needs to be done for Israel to meet the Biden administration’s expectations.

“I would not say that everything has been sufficient to date. Clearly there’s still great humanitarian need and great risk for the people that are trying to get that assistance to to those in need,” he said.

But since that conversation, the Israelis have taken steps to open up additional crossings and the U.S. has observed a sustained increase in the number of aid trucks.

“And we had seen evidence that they were working harder to improve their deconfliction processes to restore some of the some of the trust that they…lost with humanitarian aid organizations on the ground,” he said. “But I again want to stress it’s not enough… We need to see it sustained and in in the case of Rafah, and in the case of Kerem Shalom, we want to see those openings restored as soon as possible.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Biden pauses bombs shipment to Israel over humanitarian concerns in Gaza