An Israeli F-15I RAAM from 69 squadron armed with practice bombs, at the Hatzerim Air Base in the Negev desert, June 29, 2023 (Photo: Ofer Zidon/Flash90).
The Biden administration has ordered the release of around half of the shipment of heavy bombs that it held up out of concern over civilian casualties during Israel’s Rafah operation, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
While the 500-pound bombs are now “in the process of being shipped” and expected to arrive in the coming weeks, the heavier 2,000-pound bombs that were part of the same shipment have not yet been released, according to an American official.
The United States decided to hold the shipment of heavy bombs in May, announcing the decision just as an Israeli ship was en route to pick it up in Charleston, South Carolina, according to the report.
The announcement came as the U.S. tried to prevent Israel from a large-scale operation in Rafah, citing concerns the heavy bombs could cause large numbers of civilian fatalities.
After Israel promised to scale down the operation and evacuated most of the civilians from the town, U.S. officials said they were satisfied with Israel’s efforts, confirming that Israel had not crossed a “red line” after a targeted elimination of two Hamas terrorists tragically led to the deaths of several dozen civilians.
U.S. State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller said at the time that the Rafah operation was not “on the scale of” past IDF operations in Gaza City and Khan Younis. “This so far is a different type of military operation,” he stressed.
A U.S. official told the Times of Israel why the 500-pound bombs were held up.
“We’ve been clear that our concern has been on the end-use of the 2,000-pound bombs, particularly in advance of Israel’s Rafah campaign, which they have announced they are concluding,” he said.
“Because of how these shipments are put together, other munitions may sometimes be co-mingled. That’s what happened here with the 500-pound bombs.”
“Since our main concern had been and remains the potential use of 2,000-pound bombs in Rafah and elsewhere in Gaza, the 500-pound bombs are moving forward as part of the usual process,” he added.
Israel has said the IDF needs the heavy 2,000-pound bombs to dismantle Hamas’ terror infrastructure, in particular, the tunnels that have been dug deep beneath Gaza’s civilian areas.
“Other than the one shipment with the 2,000-pound bombs that has been paused and remains paused, weapons shipments continue to move in due course. But we’re not going to get into specifics of every shipment,” a National Security Council spokesman told the WSJ.
In June, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a video stating that he told U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, “It’s inconceivable that in the past few months, the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel.”
The Biden administration later acknowledged some “bottlenecks” in the weapons supply.
After meeting with U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan at the White House at the end of June, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared that “obstacles were removed and bottlenecks were addressed, in order to advance a variety of issues, and more specifically the topic of force build-up and munition supply that we must bring to the State of Israel.”
