The United States has approved another $20bn in weapons transfers to Israel, despite concerns that Israeli forces are routinely violating international law in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken approved the arms sale, which includes fighter jets and missiles, the US Department of State announced on Tuesday.
“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to US national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defence capability,” the State Department said.
The order includes Boeing-made F-15 fighter jets, Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles, or AMRAAMs, 120mm tank ammunition and high explosive mortars and tactical vehicles.
Some of the weapons, including the more than 50 fighter jets, could take years to deliver. Other equipment, such as 33,000 tank shells and 50,000 explosive mortar cartridges, could arrive soon.
The US said that the tank shells “will improve Israel’s capability to meet current and future enemy threats, strengthen its homeland defence and serve as a deterrent to regional threats”.
The announcement came as Israel expects retaliation from Iran and Lebanon-based Hezbollah following the assassinations of high-level Hamas and Hezbollah officials, which have raised concerns over the possibility of a regional war.
The US has said it is working to avoid such an escalation.
President Joe Biden on Tuesday said an Iranian response might be avoided if a ceasefire agreement was reached to end the war in Gaza where Israeli forces have killed nearly 40,000 people, largely women and children, levelled entire neighbourhoods and blocked shipments of humanitarian assistance.
Critics have called on the Biden administration to cut off weapons transfers to Israel, alleging that they make the US complicit in the destruction of Gaza.
They also note that the supply of arms is a potential source of leverage, but that the administration has refused to exploit it to secure a ceasefire.
Reports that Israeli forces are systematically violating international law and committing abuses such as torture have also failed to stop the flow of weapons, despite requirements under US law that military units credibly accused of gross human rights violations be cut off from support.
Speaking before a meeting of the United Nations Security Council, called on Tuesday to discuss the deadly weekend air strike on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza, US ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said her country’s goal in the region was to “turn the temperature down”.
“That starts with finalising a deal for an immediate ceasefire with hostage release in Gaza. We need to get this over the finish line,” she said.
‘Pouring gasoline on fire’
Tarek Khalil, a Palestinian human rights activist, told Al Jazeera that the US has the power to force Israel to sign a ceasefire deal in Gaza by withholding weapons.
Instead, the US is “pouring gasoline on a fire that could engulf millions across the region, said Edward Ahmed Mitchell, deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), in a statement.
“The increasingly unhinged Israeli government has demonstrated time and again that it not only intends to continue its brutal genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza, but also to provoke a broader regional war,” he said.
“It’s time for the Biden administration to wake up to reality: the Israeli government is not a rational actor, it is not an ally, and it is trying to drag our nation into an all-out war.”
Josh Paul, who resigned from the State Department last year in protest over policy on Gaza, said Israel had given the US no reason to believe it is moving away from “abject brutality”.
“Authorising billions of dollars in new arms transfers effectively provides Israel a carte blanche to continue its atrocities in Gaza and to escalate the conflict to Lebanon,” said Paul, now at the Middle East rights group Dawn.
