US President Joe Biden’s administration on Tuesday approved more than $20 billion in new weapons sales to Israel, ignoring pressure from human rights activists to halt arms supplies because of the humanitarian loss being caused in Gaza.
The sale comes as Biden is pressing Israel and Hamas for a ceasefire after 10 months of bloodshed, though the weapons will take years to reach Israel.
In a notification sent to the Congress, the State Department said it has approved the sale of 50 F-15 fighter jets to Israel for $18.82 billion.
Israel will also purchase approximately 33,000 tank cartridges, 50,000 explosive mortar cartridges and new military cargo vehicles.
The F-15s, which will begin being delivered in 2029, will upgrade Israel’s current fleet and include radar and secure communications equipment.
“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and assisting Israel in developing and maintaining a strong and ready self-defense capability is vital to U.S. national interests,” the State Department said in its notice on the F-15 jets manufactured by Boeing.
Regarding the tank cartridges, the US said the sale would “improve Israel’s ability to counter current and future enemy threats, strengthen its homeland security, and serve as a deterrent to regional threats.”
Congress can still block arms sales, but such a process is difficult.
Human rights groups and some left-wing members of Biden’s Democratic Party have urged the administration to curb or stop arms sales to Israel, as they express outrage over civilian casualties in the Gaza conflict.
On Saturday, rescue workers in the Hamas-ruled region said an Israeli air strike on a school for displaced Palestinians killed 93 people.
Israel said it was targeting active militants from the school. Biden administration officials expressed concern about the civilian deaths and declined to comment on whether US weapons were used.
In May, Biden blocked a shipment to Israel that included 2,000-pound bombs as he warned against a large-scale attack on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where large numbers of displaced Palestinians were living.
But the administration said it had not stopped supplies of other weapons and rejected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s complaint in June that the United States was slowing the pace of deliveries.
The Gaza war began with a Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, resulting in the deaths of 1,198 people, most of them civilians, according to Israeli official figures compiled by AFP.
The militants also took 251 people captive, 111 of whom are still being held in Gaza, 39 of whom the military says are dead.
At least 39,929 people have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory military offensive in Gaza, according to Israel’s Health Ministry, although the ministry did not give details of civilian and militant deaths.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
