The Biden administration’s pause in a shipment of high-payload munitions to Israel reverberated through Capitol Hill on Wednesday, with Democrats largely backing the move as necessary to convince Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to hold off on military actions in the Gaza Strip and Republicans warning Iran might conclude U.S. backing of Israel is no longer ironclad.
The administration last week “paused” one shipment of near-term assistance consisting of 3,500 bombs weighing 2,000 pounds and 500 pounds, said a U.S. official, who was not authorized to be quoted. It was the first known instance of the administration holding back security assistance to Israel in the seven-month Israel-Hamas war.
The Israeli military appears poised to begin a ground assault on the city of Rafah, where some 1.3 million Palestinians — many of them already displaced at least once by the war — are crowded together in unsafe and dire living conditions. Israel is seeking to root out the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which governs Gaza.
