President Biden paused an arms shipment to Israel last week to prevent the U.S.-made weapons from being used in a long-threatened assault on the city Rafah, administration officials said on Tuesday night, a sign of the growing rift between Washington and Jerusalem over the conduct of the war.
The president withheld 1,800 2,000-pound bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs that he feared could be dropped on Rafah, where more than one million Gazans have taken refuge, the officials said. The administration is reviewing whether to hold back future transfers, including guidance kits that convert so-called dumb bombs into precision-guided munitions.
The decision to delay the delivery of the 3,500 bombs was the first time that Mr. Biden has used his power to curtail arms as an instrument to influence Israel’s approach to the war since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led terrorist attack. A number of Mr. Biden’s Democratic allies in Congress have for weeks urged him to limit or halt arms shipments to Israel, something he had refused to do until now because of his strong support for the war against Hamas.
I wonder what’s different here. Israel has danced over the US’s red lines before with such alacrity that they may as well have been an invitation. “I wasn’t gonna, but you drew a red line there. Oh I can’t resist.”