Where do the weapons for the Gaza genocide come from?
On May 7, Israeli newspaper Haaretz ran a news report on its website, titled "US Slow-rolling Weapons Sale to Israel, Sparking Questions of Policy Shift." What prompted the story was US President Joe Biden's decision to pause a shipment of weapons to Israel last week, apparently in opposition to Israel's decision to invade Rafah, the southern Gaza city where Palestinians have been forced to seek shelter as Israel's genocidal campaign continues to sweep down upon them from the north.
The Biden administration is clearly under some pressure due to Israel's open brutality and murderous campaign against the Palestinians, and because of the ongoing student protests in US universities urging different institutions to end their support for it. However, for experts to even question whether the US is shifting its policy in regard to the Palestine-Israel issue is completely disingenuous.
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For starters, it was only two weeks ago that 12 US Republican senators issued a letter to the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, warning that the institution would face "severe sanctions" if it issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and any other Israeli officials. And their threats were quite clear, "If you move forward with the measures indicated in the report, we will move to end all American support for the ICC, sanction your employees and associates, and bar you and your families from the United States. You have been warned," the letter read.
Secondly, as The Washington Post reported in March, the Biden administration has "quietly approved and delivered more than 100 separate foreign military sales to Israel since the Gaza war began" on October 7. And the military hardware provided to Israel includes "thousands of precision-guided munitions, small-diameter bombs, bunker busters, small arms and other lethal aid." These sales, of course, were separate to the ones the Biden administration already gave greenlight to by bypassing Congress as emergency weapons sales to Israel. And the way they were initiated is even more interesting.
According to The Guardian, the Biden administration managed to make these deliveries without Congressional oversight because each transaction was made so small that they did not require Congressional approval. Hence, most of these sales were made without Congress or the public knowing about them—at least up until a point. "This doesn't just seem like an attempt to avoid technical compliance with US arms export law; it's an extremely troubling way to avoid transparency and accountability on a high-profile issue," said Ari Tolany, director of the security assistance monitor at the Centre for International Policy.
It is a known fact that the US is by far the biggest supplier of arms to Israel. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the US accounted for 69 percent of Israel's imports of major conventional arms between 2019 and 2023. Moreover, the US also provides Israel with $3.8 billion in annual military aid under a 10-year agreement so that Israel can "maintain" a "qualitative military edge" over its neighbours—or wipe out the rest of the Palestinian population. After the US comes Germany, which provides 30 percent of Israel's arms import, followed by other countries who provide the rest one percent. In other words, the US and Germany account for nearly all of Israel's weapons imports.
The fact that these are the same weapons that are being used to at least initiate an ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians is also well-known. In a recent report, the Human Rights Watch conclusively showed that US weapons were used by Israel on an emergency and relief centre in south Lebanon on March 27, 2024, to kill aid workers even.
So, for it to be asked whether the US is shifting its policy towards Israel because of the suspension of just one weapon shipment is a joke. The likely reason why the US has suspended this shipment is because of a highly anticipated report on whether Israel is using US military aid in compliance with international law, which the Biden administration is set to delay. Rights groups have been urging the US administration to make this report public. And given the sway in American public sentiment in sympathy for Palestinians—as apparent from the student movement—the Biden administration is probably reluctant to add more fuel to the fire.
Even if the report can be tampered with to downplay just how guilty Israel has been in its use of these weapons and the number of international laws that it has broken can be brought down, there is no way of showing Israel as fully innocent. So, the Biden administration is simply trying to appease some of the protesters and take the heat off of itself through its latest decision, which is nothing short of an attempt to deceive the public.
But ultimately, no matter the optics, the US can, in no way, wash its hands off Palestinian blood which continues to flow, by acting as Israel's primary arms factory that provides the weapons that is allowing Israel to wage its genocidal campaign against the Palestinians.
Eresh Omar Jamal is deputy editor of editorial and opinion at The Daily Star. His X handle is @EreshOmarJamal
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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