U.S. Stalls Weapons Shipment to Israel in Bid to Stop Rafah Offensive

In its clearest public rebuke to date of Israel’s war in Gaza, the White House said it has halted a shipment of bombs to Israel and is reviewing other proposed arms deals, hoping to force Israel to rethink its military assault on Rafah.

The Biden administration said late Tuesday it had paused a shipment of weapons that included different types of munitions, including 2,000-pound bombs. U.S. officials also said they were conducting a review of other weapons sales amid Israel’s operations in Rafah launched late Monday, after Hamas agreed to the rough outlines of a deal that could release hostages for a cease-fire.

Israel sent tanks into Rafah and took control of the Gaza side of a key border crossing to Egypt on Tuesday, securing a strategic corridor as negotiators met in Cairo for talks on a truce and hostage releases. The seizure of the crossing closed a critical gateway for humanitarian assistance for Palestinians, prompting the U.S. to renew calls to reopen the gate.

Republicans on Thursday criticized the White House for halting arms shipments while Israel is still fighting in Gaza.

“It wasn’t the Israelis that started this conflict. And I’m just very concerned that we do not try to micromanage Israel’s right to defend itself against the terrorist group backed by Iran,” Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine) told Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at an Appropriations subcommittee hearing Thursday.

Austin said the shipment of bombs would resume after Israel supplied it with a plan to protect the more than 1.1 million civilians seeking refuge in Rafah.

“We wanted to make sure that we saw a plan to move those civilians out of the battlespace before executing any kind of ground combat operation,” he said.

Israel didn’t need 2,000-pound bombs for a Rafah operation because “that could create a lot of collateral damage,” he said. Instead, smaller, more precise bombs would be more effective, the former four-star general said.

The Hill wasn’t notified by the White House before Tuesday’s announcement, a congressional aide said, an omission that appeared to anger some lawmakers. Collins noted that Congress has consistently supported sending weapons sales to Israel. Last month legislators approved a foreign aid package that included $26 billion in aid for Israel, money for replenishing U.S. weapons stockpiles, and humanitarian aid for Gaza.

The Biden administration has repeatedly said that it opposes Israel launching a ground operation in Rafah unless there is a plan to protect the more than one million people who have sought safety in the southern Gaza city. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the Rafah operation would go forward “with or without a deal.”

Israel has “not fully addressed our concerns,” a senior administration official said in a statement.

“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 in the statement about the review, which began in April. “We have paused one shipment of weapons,” which consists of 1,800 bombs that weigh 2,000 pounds. The shipment also has 1,700 bombs that weigh 500 pounds.

“We are especially focused on the end-use of the 2,000-lb 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 is leading the review, when it would conclude or how the administration is making its assessment.

The Israeli prime minister’s office and Israeli military declined to comment.

“It’s a pressure tactic,” said Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington. “We might have a certain amount of reserve left, but it’s sending a message.”

During a March interview with MSNBC, President Biden warned that an Israeli offensive on Rafah would be a “red line.”

“[We] cannot have another 30,000 more Palestinians dead,” Biden said then.

The U.S. 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 U.S.-provided weapons.

In recent weeks the administration had quietly made changes to its weapons sales to Israel. The U.S. did move forward with the sale of up to 6,500 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 $260 million, but the Biden administration since that time hasn’t moved forward with the deal, The Wall Street Journal reported. The State Department is reviewing that sale, the senior administration official said.

The State Department is required to notify Congress when the U.S. plans to sell weapons to other countries when the deal rises above specific dollar thresholds. The State Department typically provides information to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations ahead of those potential arms sales before Congress is formally notified.

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 also hasn’t advanced the congressional notification process on $1 billion in weapons deals for Israel that include tank ammunition, military vehicles and mortar rounds, U.S. officials said.

Those potential deals included the transfer of $700 million in 120mm tank ammunition, $500 million in tactical vehicles and less than $100 million in 120mm mortar rounds, U.S. officials said. The sales would take months or years to be delivered.

The administration is under pressure from many Democrats in Congress to cut back weapons supplies to pressure Israel into doing more to prevent the killing of civilians in Gaza.

More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the offensive in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to Palestinian authorities, who don’t specify how many were combatants. Israel invaded Gaza after a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 killed some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, according to Israel.

Most of Israel’s weapons purchases from the U.S. are made using the billions of dollars in American government funding that Washington gives to help Israel shore up its military each year. Israel is among the largest recipients of U.S. military aid.

Following months of legislative gridlock stemming from Republican objections to aiding Ukraine, Congress last month passed a bill to provide an additional $26 billion in assistance for Israel and humanitarian aid for Gaza, 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. The paused weapons shipment is related to previously appropriated funds and isn’t linked to the recent aid that Congress approved, the official said.

The U.S. sent tens of thousands of bombs, artillery shells and other munitions to Israel in the initial months of the war following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. The flow dropped off in recent months as the Pentagon has run short of munitions it can provide Israel quickly, while also meeting Ukraine’s needs and maintaining sufficient U.S. stockpiles.

Carrie Keller-Lynn contributed to this article

Write to Nancy A. Youssef at [email protected] and Gordon Lubold at [email protected]