The United States has paused a shipment of \u201chigh-payload\u201d munitions to Israel for review over concerns about a potential military offensive on the Gazan city of Rafah, Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday. The paused delivery was supposed to contain 3,500 bombs, split roughly evenly between 2,000-pound (907-kilogram) and 500-pound explosives, a senior administration official was cited as saying in media reports.<\/p>\n
Austin said no final decision has been made on the shipment. But the defence secretary stressed that the U.S. commitment to Israel\u2019s defense remained \u201ciron-clad\u201d and that the decision on suspending the munitions shipment was not final. Still, he said the U.S. preference would be that \u201cno major combat take place in Rafah\u201d and that at a minimum any Israeli operation must safeguard civilian lives. \u201cWe\u2019ve been very clear\u2026 from the very beginning that Israel shouldn\u2019t launch a major attack into Rafah without accounting for and protecting the civilians that are in that battles pace,\u201d Austin told a Senate hearing. \u201cAnd again, as we have assessed the situation, we have paused one shipment of high payload munitions,\u201d he told a Senate hearing. \u201cWe\u2019ve not made a final determination on how to proceed with that shipment.\u201d Israel has threatened a major assault on Rafah, but Western nations and the United Nations say a full-scale attack on the city would triggger a humanitarian catastrophe. Since Oct 7, Israel\u2019s campaign to destroy Hamas has led to a seven-month-long military campaign that has so far killed a total of 34,789 Palestinians, mostly women and children. The conflict has also left many of Gaza\u2019s 2.3 million people on the brink of starvation and sparked protests in the U.S. demanding that universities and Biden withdraw support for Israel \u2013 including the provision of weaponry. Biden is also under pressure from Democrats, including lawmakers in his party, to put more pressure on Israel. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham was among the Republicans who rebuked the Biden administration over the decision.
\n\u201cThis is obscene. It is absurd. Give Israel what they need,\u201d Graham said, adding it wasn\u2019t for Washington to second-guess how Israel fought a war against Hamas bent on Israel\u2019s destruction. U.S. Senator Deb Fischer, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called on Biden to drop \u201chis politically-motivated hold\u201d.
\n\u201cAmerican support for Israel cannot be in doubt, especially now,\u201d she said. For its part, the Israeli military appeared on Wednesday to play down the arms shipment hold-up, saying the allies resolve any disagreements \u201cbehind closed doors\u201d. Speaking at a conference hosted by the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper as the Gaza war entered its eighth month, Israel\u2019s chief military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari described coordination between Israel and the United States as reaching \u201ca scope without precedent, I think, in history\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United States has paused a shipment of \u201chigh-payload\u201d munitions to Israel for review over concerns about a potential military offensive on the Gazan city of Rafah, Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday. The paused delivery was supposed to contain 3,500 bombs, split roughly evenly between 2,000-pound (907-kilogram) and 500-pound explosives, a senior administration official …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":64502,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64503,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64473\/revisions\/64503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}