Israel-Gaza war: will US decision to withhold weapons supplies stop assault on ‘red line’ Rafah?
- Israel’s vow to ‘go it alone’ masks potentially decisive impact delays in weapons delivery will have on Gaza war and ability to mount offensive against Hezbollah
- Change in Israeli military tactics could also prolong the war, something that could benefit PM Benjamin Netanyahu politically, analysts note
The United States’ decision last week to withhold a single shipment of 3,500 heavy bombs to Israel will not undermine the latter’s ability to conduct a military operation in southern Gaza that President Joe Biden has described as a “red line”, officials have said.
Israeli leaders have vowed to “go it alone” if necessary, after the rare symbolic US move to block the delivery of 1,800 907kg (2,000-pound) bombs and 1,700 225kg bombs was made public on Wednesday.
The US has been Israel’s largest weapons supplier by far since the Jewish-majority state fended off a multilateral Arab military attack in 1967 and occupied swathes of its neighbours’ territory.
Since October, the US has reportedly made more than 100 military aid transfers to Israel, mostly in packages small enough not to require public scrutiny by Congress.
But for the last two months, Washington has repeatedly complained that Israel has failed to share military plans showing how it would prevent mass casualties among the 1.4 million Palestinians that United Nations humanitarian agencies say have taken refuge in Rafah, after fleeing fighting elsewhere in the tiny Gaza Strip.
If Israel’s operation in Rafah proceeds without taking US concerns into account, “we’re not going to supply the weapons and the artillery shells that have been used,” Biden said in an interview with CNN on Wednesday. “Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs. It’s just wrong.”
Analysts noted that Biden’s remarks are the first acknowledgement by Washington that American armaments have been used to kill Palestinian civilians.