The administration of US President Joe Biden has approved a $320 million sale to Israel of equipment for kits that turn unguided bombs into more precise, GPS-guided munitions, while it continues to urge Israeli officials to protect civilians in Gaza.
Tuesday’s approval came while several staffers and diplomats at the US State Department have criticized the administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
According to correspondence viewed by The Wall Street Journal, the State Department had sent a formal notification on Oct. 31 to congressional leaders of the planned transfer of Spice Family Gliding Bomb Assemblies, a type of precision-guided weapon fired by warplanes.
Under the agreement, weapons manufacturer Rafael USA would transfer the bombs to its Israeli parent company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems for use by the Israeli defense ministry, the correspondence says. The plan also includes the provision of support, assembly, testing and other technology related to the weapons use. It follows a $402 million transfer of the same weapons that the administration first sought congressional approval for in 2020.
The weapons were requested by Israel before Oct. 7, with an initial, informal notification sent to congressional leaders earlier this year, according to officials familiar with the process.
However, the need for them in war made the matter more urgent.
Officials at the state and defense departments didn’t respond to requests for comment on the matter.
Senior US officials have urged Israel in recent days to pause its bombing to alleviate the humanitarian crisis. Some security analysts said the potential weapons transfer could undercut those efforts.
“The Biden administration has been urging the Israeli government to allow for humanitarian pauses, but this sale and other similar military assistance being rushed to Israel completely undermines that effort,” said Seth Binder, director of advocacy and an expert on weapons sales to the region at the Project on Middle East Democracy, a policy institute in Washington.
“The administration may be asking for pauses but its actions say it is supporting the bombing campaign,” Binder said.
State Department staffers offered a blistering critique of the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war in a dissent memo obtained by POLITICO.
It reflects the sentiments of many US diplomats, especially at mid-level and lower ranks, according to conversations with several department staffers as well as other reports.
The memo has two key requests: that the US support a ceasefire, and that it balance its private and public messaging toward Israel, including airing criticisms of Israeli military tactics and treatment of Palestinians that the US generally prefers to keep private.
The gap between America’s private and public messaging “contributes to regional public perceptions that the United States is a biased and dishonest actor, which at best does not advance, and at worst harms, US interests worldwide,” the document states.
“We must publicly criticize Israel’s violations of international norms such as failure to limit offensive operations to legitimate military targets,” the message also states. “When Israel supports settler violence and illegal land seizures or employs excessive use of force against Palestinians, we must communicate publicly that this goes against our American values so that Israel does not act with impunity.”
The memo is marked “sensitive but unclassified.” It’s not clear how many people signed it or if and when it was submitted to the department’s Dissent Channel, where employees can voice policy disagreements.
The department declined to comment directly on the memo, as is standard on such communications. It referred POLITICO to past statements by spokesperson Matthew Miller, who has said Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomes such arguments and weighs them carefully.
“One of the strengths of this department is that we do have people with different opinions,” Miller said about such messages during a press briefing last month. “We encourage them to make their opinions known.”
Although the memo concedes that Israel has a “legitimate right and obligation” to seek justice against Hamas, it argues that “the extent of human lives lost thus far is unacceptable.”
The document states that the US “tolerance” for such a high civilian death toll “engenders doubt in the rules-based international order that we have long championed.”
