Pentagon Chief Confirms US Has Paused Bomb Shipment to Israel to Signal Concerns over Rafah Invasion

Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike on buildings near the separating wall between Egypt and Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Tuesday, May 7, 2024. (AP)
Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike on buildings near the separating wall between Egypt and Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Tuesday, May 7, 2024. (AP)
TT

Pentagon Chief Confirms US Has Paused Bomb Shipment to Israel to Signal Concerns over Rafah Invasion

Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike on buildings near the separating wall between Egypt and Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Tuesday, May 7, 2024. (AP)
Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike on buildings near the separating wall between Egypt and Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Tuesday, May 7, 2024. (AP)

The US paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that the country was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the US, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday.

The shipment was supposed to consist of 1,800 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) bombs and 1,700 500-pound (225-kilogram) bombs, according to the official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The focus of US concern was the larger explosives and how they could be used in a dense urban setting like Rafa where more than 1 million civilians are sheltering after evacuating other parts of Gaza amid Israel’s war on Hamas, which came after the militant group’s deadly attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

Austin confirmed the weapons delay, telling the Senate Appropriations Defense subcommittee that the US paused “one shipment of high payload munitions.”

“We’re going to continue to do what’s necessary to ensure that Israel has the means to defend itself,” Austin said. “But that said, we are currently reviewing some near-term security assistance shipments in the context of unfolding events in Rafah.”

The US has historically provided enormous amounts of military aid to Israel. That has only accelerated in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack that killed some 1,200 in Israel and led to about 250 being taken captive by fighters.  

The pausing of the aid shipment is the most striking manifestation of the growing daylight between Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and the administration of President Joe Biden, which has called on Israel to do far more to protect the lives of innocent civilians in Gaza.

It also comes as the Biden administration is due to deliver a first-of-its-kind formal verdict this week on whether the airstrikes on Gaza and restrictions on delivery of aid have violated international and US laws designed to spare civilians from the worst horrors of war. A decision against Israel would further add to pressure on Biden to curb the flow of weapons and money to Israel’s military.

Biden signed off on the pause in an order conveyed last week to the Pentagon, according to US officials who were not authorized to comment on the matter. The White House National Security Council sought to keep the decision out of the public eye for several days until it had a better understanding of the scope of Israel’s intensified military operations in Rafah and until Biden could deliver a long-planned speech on Tuesday to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Biden’s administration in April began reviewing future transfers of military assistance as Netanyahu’s government appeared to move closer toward an invasion of Rafah, despite months of opposition from the White House. The official said the decision to pause the shipment was made last week and no final decision had been made yet on whether to proceed with the shipment at a later date.

US officials had declined for days to comment on the halted transfer, word of which came as Biden on Tuesday described US support for Israel as “ironclad, even when we disagree.”

Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to square the arms holdup with Biden’s rhetoric in support of Israel, saying only, “Two things could be true.”

Israeli troops on Tuesday seized control of Gaza’s vital Rafah border crossing in what the White House described as a limited operation that stopped short of the full-on Israeli invasion of the city that Biden has repeatedly warned against on humanitarian grounds, most recently in a Monday call with Netanyahu.

Israel has ordered the evacuation of 100,000 Palestinians from the city. Israeli forces have also carried out what it describes as “targeted strikes” on the eastern part of Rafah and captured the Rafah crossing, a critical conduit for the flow of humanitarian aid along the Gaza-Egypt border.

Privately, concern has mounted inside the White House about what’s unfolding in Rafah, but publicly administration officials have stressed that they did not think the operations had defied Biden’s warnings against a widescale operation in the city.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Israel described the operation along the Gaza-Egypt border in eastern Rafah as “an operation of limited scale and duration” aimed at cutting off Hamas arms smuggling, but also said the US would monitor the fighting.

Just last month, Congress passed a $95 billion national security bill that included funding for Ukraine, Israel and other allies. The package included more than $14 billion in military aid for Israel, though the stalled transfer was not related to that measure.

The State Department is separately considering whether to approve the continued transfer of Joint Direct Attack Munition kits, which place precision guidance systems onto bombs, to Israel, but the review didn’t pertain to imminent shipments.

The US dropped the 2,000-pound bomb sparingly in its long war against the ISIS group. Israel, by contrast, has used the bomb frequently in the seven-month Gaza war. Experts say the use of the weapon, in part, has helped drive the enormous Palestinian casualty count that the Hamas-run health ministry puts at more than 34,000 dead, though it doesn’t distinguish between militants and civilians.

The US-Israel relationship has been close through both Democratic and Republican administrations. But there have been other moments of deep tension since Israel's founding in which US leaders have threatened to hold up aid in attempt to sway Israeli leadership.

President Dwight Eisenhower pressured Israel with the threat of sanctions into withdrawing from the Sinai in 1957 in the midst of the Suez Crisis. Ronald Reagan delayed the delivery of F16 fighter jets to Israel at a time of escalating violence in the Middle East. President George H.W. Bush held up $10 billion in loan guarantees to force the cessation of Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories.



Algeria's President is Expected to Win a Second Term in Saturday's Election

A man walks past an electoral banner of Algeria's incumbent president and independent presidential candidate Abdelmajid Tebboune in Oran on September 5, 2024, ahead of the upcoming presidential elections. (Photo by AFP)
A man walks past an electoral banner of Algeria's incumbent president and independent presidential candidate Abdelmajid Tebboune in Oran on September 5, 2024, ahead of the upcoming presidential elections. (Photo by AFP)
TT

Algeria's President is Expected to Win a Second Term in Saturday's Election

A man walks past an electoral banner of Algeria's incumbent president and independent presidential candidate Abdelmajid Tebboune in Oran on September 5, 2024, ahead of the upcoming presidential elections. (Photo by AFP)
A man walks past an electoral banner of Algeria's incumbent president and independent presidential candidate Abdelmajid Tebboune in Oran on September 5, 2024, ahead of the upcoming presidential elections. (Photo by AFP)

Algerians head to the polls Saturday to cast votes for president and determine who will govern their gas-rich North African nation — five years after pro-democracy protests prompted the military to oust the previous president after two decades in power.
Algeria is Africa's largest country by area and, with almost 45 million people, it's the continent's second most populous after South Africa to hold presidential elections in 2024 — a year in which more than 50 elections are being held worldwide, encompassing more than half the world's population.
Since elections were scheduled in March — ahead of the predicted schedule — there has been little suspense as President Abdelmadjid Tebboune appears poised to breeze to victory against the two challengers running against him.
The hot summer campaign has sparked little enthusiasm, apart from on public television, where it's required that candidate and surrogate appearances be covered. On TV, election season has been presented as a vibrant affair.
“Voting has no meaning in Algeria like in the big democracies,” 28-year-old Kaci Taher told The Associated Press a month before the election. “Where I come from, the results and quotas are fixed in advance in the back room of the government, so what’s the point of taking part in the electoral farce?”
Tebboune was elected in December 2019 after nearly a year of weekly demonstrations demanding the resignation of former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Their demands were met when Bouteflika resigned that April and was replaced by an interim government of his former allies, which called for elections later in the year.
Protestors opposed holding elections too soon, fearing the candidates running that year each were close to the old regime and would perpetuate the corruption-ridden system they wanted to end. Tebboune, a former prime minister seen as close to Algeria's politically powerful military, emerged the winner. But his victory was marred by low voter turnout, widespread boycotts from protestors and Election Day tumult, during which crowds sacked voting stations and police broke up demonstrations.
This year, Tebboune ran as an independent candidate with the support of several political parties including the National Liberation Front, which has dominated Algerian politics since the country wrested independence from France after more than a decade of war in 1962.
The southwestern Algeria native and political veteran has framed his first term in office as a turning point, telling voters in a campaign rally the week before polls that he “put Algeria back on track." To cement his legitimacy both domestically and to Algeria's allies, he hopes more of the country's 24 million eligible voters will participate in Saturday's election than in his first, when 39.9% turned out to vote.
“It seems that what matters most to ‘le pouvoir’ in this election is voter turnout to lend legitimacy to their candidate, whose victory is a foregone conclusion,” said Algerian sociologist Mohamed Hennad, employing a term frequently used to describe the military-backed political establishment.
Twenty-six candidates submitted preliminary paperwork to run in the election, although only two were ultimately approved to challenge Tebboune. Like the president, both have also emphasized turnout. Neither political novices, they have avoided directly criticizing Tebboune on the campaign trail.
Abdelali Hassani Cherif, a 57-year-old engineer from the Movement of Society for Peace party has made populist appeals to Algerian youth, running on the slogan “Opportunity!” and calling for efforts to boost employment and reform education, where French language has long played a major role in addition to Arabic.
Youcef Aouchiche, a 41-year-old former journalist running with the Socialist Forces Front, campaigned on a “vision for tomorrow,” and referenced human rights issues plaguing journalists, activists and critics of the government in Tebboune's Algeria. It's the first time since 1999 that his party, which enjoys strong support among ethnic minorities in central Algeria, has put forth a candidate.
Andrew Farrand, the Middle East and North Africa director at the geopolitical risk consultancy Horizon Engage, said both opposition candidates were more aimed at the 2025 legislative elections than the 2024 presidential contest. Because Algerian law funds political parties based on the number of seats they win in legislative elections, they hope campaigning will position them for a strong performance in 2025.