Biden’s Threat to Freeze Some Weapons Deliveries Raises Alarm in Israel

TEL AVIV—President Biden’s threat to withhold some weapons deliveries raised alarms in Israel about a rupture in relations with its most important international supporter.

Israeli officials and analysts said Biden’s warning appears to be a political message to the Israeli government. But the country’s long-term ability to fight war on multiple fronts could be threatened if the U.S. president followed through on his threat to pause more weapons deliveries if Israel launches a major assault in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. More than one million Palestinians are sheltering there from the war.

In the short term, though, a pause in U.S. weapons deliveries wouldn’t affect Israel’s ability to wage war, setting up a high-stakes showdown between Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has vowed to achieve a “total victory” over Hamas, including in Rafah. It risks one of the worst crises ever in Israeli-American relations, drawing comparisons to former President Ronald Reagan’s decision to delay delivery of F-16 warplanes to Israel during its bombardment of Beirut in 1981.

Netanyahu on Thursday reposted his speech from Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day earlier this week on X in an implicit response to Biden. “I say to the leaders of the world, no decision by any international forum will stop Israel from defending itself,” he says in the speech. “If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone,” he said.

Israel’s war and security cabinets were set to meet Thursday evening and were expected to discuss Israel’s response to the U.S. decision to withhold munitions, according to an Israeli official.

Biden’s threat led the Israeli news agenda on Thursday with most reporters and analysts conveying alarm over the pause and characterizing it as U.S. frustration with Israel’s management of the war, a sign of deteriorating relations and a warning to Netanyahu. Others, including Netanyahu’s supporters, were angry at the Biden administration for failing to fully support Israel in reaching its war goals and constraining the prime minister’s actions after seven months of war.

“Certainly the defense establishment is horrified by this,” said Chuck Freilich, a former deputy national security adviser in Israel. “The importance here, at least for the short term, is the political statement. It won’t have a military impact on operations in Gaza. It could if there’s a major outbreak of fighting with Hezbollah.”  In the event of war with the Lebanese group, the U.S. would likely resume all military aid, he said.

Israel has been fighting a slow-burning conflict with Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement since the war against Hamas in Gaza began in October. It holds in reserve supplies of munitions for a possible full-scale war with Lebanon, but has already drawn weapons from those stocks during the war in Gaza, The Wall Street Journal has previously reported.

“I think we all should be very concerned and we are very disappointed,” said Danny Danon, a lawmaker from Netanyahu’s Likud party, adding that Israel had expected the U.S. to stand with its ally at a time it is under attack from all directions.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant implicitly addressed the U.S. as part of a speech he gave on Thursday. “I turn to Israel’s enemies as well as to our best of friends and say, the state of Israel cannot be subdued, not the IDF, not the defense establishment, and not the State of Israel. We will stand strong, we will achieve our goals,” he said.

British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said the British government also didn’t support a major invasion of Rafah without a plan to protect civilians, but it wouldn’t follow the U.S. in cutting weapons supplies to Israel. Cameron, taking questions at the end of a foreign policy speech in London on Thursday, noted that the U.K. wasn’t a major supplier of weapons to Israel, providing less than 1% of the country’s needs.

Israeli forces seized control of the Gazan side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt earlier this week, sparking battles with Palestinian fighters as it pressed forward in the area in what it called a limited operation.

On Thursday, the Israeli military said that 50 militants were killed and 10 tunnel shafts discovered during its continuing operation in Rafah this week.

Meanwhile, negotiations continued Thursday toward a possible cease-fire deal that would free Israeli hostages held by Hamas, according to officials familiar with the talks. Central Intelligence Director William Burns has been in the region in recent days in an effort to push the negotiations forward after months of gridlock.

Biden said in an interview with CNN that aired on Wednesday night in the U.S. that he would refuse to send more bombs and artillery shells to Israel if it proceeds with an operation in Rafah. The warning came after he decided to put on hold the delivery of a shipment of 2,000- and 500-pound bombs, the first time that he has chosen to withhold the supply of the types of weapons that Israel uses in Gaza.

The question now is how Netanyahu responds to Biden’s ultimatum. The Israeli prime minister for months has argued that attacking Rafah and destroying Hamas’s remaining forces there is necessary to quash the militant group.

Israeli and U.S. intelligence officials say that destroying Hamas totally is likely out of reach, with or without the Rafah operation.

Western officials and the U.N. have also warned that a large-scale attack on Rafah would result in widespread death and destruction among the Palestinian civilians who are sheltering in the area, including many who have fled there from the northern Gaza Strip.

Within Israel, some expressed concern that Netanyahu’s stewardship of the war had alienated the country’s most important ally and Biden himself, who strongly backed Israel earlier in the war, winning support for the U.S. president from many in Israel.

“The prime minister’s strategic paralysis is the source of this entanglement. The attempt to foist responsibility on Biden is disgraceful. No president has ever stood by our side this way,” said former Prime Minister Ehud Barak writing on X.

Some within the Israeli parliament expressed dismay at Netanyahu’s handling of the war and the resulting discord with Washington.

“This is a management failure of Israel’s foreign policy on a level that is hard to describe. It’s not a surprise. We knew they were considering it and that they were talking about it. They told us and tried to explain to us and the government just ignored it,” said a member of the Israeli opposition.

Others were less concerned.

“Bibi thinks that this is just a yellow card and that the red card will never arrive,” said Amit Segal, a right-wing political commentator on Israel’s Channel 12 news, referring to Netanyahu by his widely used nickname. Netanyahu believes Biden won’t go as far as stopping weapons shipments to Israel due to the weight of conservative and Jewish voters in the U.S. leading up to the presidential election, said Segal.

If Netanyahu were to ignore Biden’s warning, he would face disquiet from within the Israeli defense establishment and within his own war cabinet, which includes two centrist leaders who favor warm relations with the U.S., analysts say. Other, far-right members of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition have been critical of Biden, with National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir tweeting on Thursday “Hamas loves Biden.”

“He’s playing to multiple audiences,” said Freilich. “With Netanyahu, all bets are off.”

The Biden administration faces decisions about future weapons transfers. The administration is currently considering the transfer of more than $1 billion in new weapons for Israel including tank ammunition, military vehicles and mortar rounds, the Journal has reported. The State Department is also reviewing a separate deal for precision weapons for Israel.

The administration could decide to hold those weapons deals if Netanyahu proceeds with an attack on Rafah. If Washington were to proceed with them, it would have to seek approval from key leaders in Congress, where it would face strong opposition from Democrats who want the administration to use weapons sales to coerce changes in Israeli policy. The administration is also facing criticism from Republicans in Congress who oppose conditioning military aid.

The decision to hold back one weapons delivery was a “small warning shot to Israel, yes, but not at all a shift in policy,” said a senior U.S. congressional aide.

The U.S. sent tens of thousands of bombs, artillery shells and other munitions to Israel in the initial months of the war. Most of those weapons came from previously approved U.S. military sales, most of them paid for by billions of dollars in American government funding to support Israel. Washington organized more than 100 individual arms transfers to Israel.

The Biden administration is now reviewing the transfer of specific weapons that Israel could use in any major operation in Rafah.

“We are especially focused on the end use of the 2,000-pound bombs and the impact they could have in dense urban settings as we have seen in other parts of Gaza,” a senior administration official said this week.

Congress separately last month passed a bill to provide an additional $26 billion in assistance for Israel, including more than $5 billion to replenish Israel’s air defenses. Biden signed the bill, along with separate measures to send weapons to Ukraine and Taiwan, in late April.

Carrie Keller-Lynn and Summer Said contributed to this article

Write to Jared Malsin at [email protected]