Does Israel need more US arms for a Rafah
offensive?
Dan Sabbagh
Defence and security editor
Biden’s threat to halt shipments seems to leave some
weapon types available to Israel as well as stockpiles and an unaffected air
force
Thu 9 May
2024 16.59 BST
The volume
of US military aid to Israel since 7 October last year suggests the intensity
of the assault on Gaza would not have been possible without the continued
supply of American bombs, shells and other munitions, some of which the US
president, Joe Biden, is now threatening to halt after seven months of the
fighting.
Precise
figures are hard to come by, partly because the US is careful to keep shipments
below disclosable limits and can rely on old congressional approvals, sometimes
dating back many years, to send arms without the need for fresh authorisation.
But even the limited disclosure reveals their significance.
Officials
privately told Congress in March that more than 100 separate foreign military
sales had been made to Israel since 7 October, and one US thinktank reported
that the Pentagon had “sometimes struggled to find sufficient cargo aircraft to
deliver the systems” because so much was waiting to be shipped over.
A standing
10-year agreement, signed by Barack Obama, as US president, in 2016, has
allowed for the provision of $3.3bn a year in arms since 2018, plus a further
$500m a year for air defence systems. On top of that Congress approved a
further $13bn worth of military aid last month, including $5.2bn to bolster
existing air defences.
It is a
security relationship that began in the 1960s, and the US has provided more
than $123bn of military aid to date. Of Israel’s arms imports, 69% comes from
the US, according to the Stockholm Peace Research Institute, and pauses have
been very rare. Ronald Reagan, as US president, once held up the transfer of
F-16 fighters in 1982, unhappy that Israel had invaded Lebanon.
During the
current conflict the Pentagon has only occasionally published details of the
aid it has sent: $320m in precision bomb kits in November, and in December
14,000 tank shells costing $106m, and $147.5m for 57,000 155mm artillery shells
and their fuses and primers, plus 30,000 howitzer charges.
Meanwhile,
Israel’s air force said that in mid-February it had struck targets 29,000 times
in Gaza, a little over four months into the conflict, in its efforts to
eliminate Hamas. It is part of a strategy of saturation bombing that has killed
34,780 Palestinians, according to the territory’s health ministry.
A surprise
was that the US was even considering supplying the 1,700 500lb bombs and in
particular the 1,800 2,000lb bombs now paused by Biden. A 2,000lb bomb, four
times heavier than the largest bombs used by the US against Isis in Mosul, is
powerful enough to blow up a small apartment block and leave behind a crater 12
metres wide.
The US
presumption was that these crude, heavy, weapons, capable of killing dozens or
more in a crowded area, were going to be used in a final Israeli assault on
Rafah. “Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and
other ways in which they go after population centres,” Biden told CNN on
Wednesday night.
Previously,
2,000lb bombs were believed to have been used in strikes such as at the
Jabaliya refugee camp on 31 October, where it is estimated that at least 116
civilians were killed. Another estimate, by CNN, using satellite imagery,
concluded that 500 large impact craters had appeared in Gaza during the first
month of the war to 6 November, consistent with the use of 2,000lb munitions.
The
question is, without the larger US bombs, how many do the Israel Defense Forces
(IDF) have stockpiled? It is not a question that is easy to answer. In response
to the 7 October attack the US opened up access to its own arms stockpile in
Israel, WRSA-I, which could have had up to $4.4bn worth of munitions of various
types in it, according to a congressional research estimate.
The reality
is that the limited category of weapons covered by the Biden pause leaves other
weapons types apparently available to Israel, including tank rounds and
artillery shells. Israel’s air force remains largely unaffected; 25 more F-35
fighters were approved for sale in March, part of a deal authorised by Congress
in 2008.
In the
short term, Israel is almost certainly able to go ahead, if it chooses to, with
its threatened offensive in Rafah, despite the acute humanitarian crisis it is
almost certain to cause among the million Palestinians desperately sheltering
there. But that would risk deepening the military supply rift with the US.
An analysis
from the conservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies, in Washington DC,
suggests that Israel, which last year spent 5.3% of its GDP on defence (more
than two and a half times the Nato target) would have to lift budgets to
between 7% and 8% “to reduce (not eliminate) its reliance on foreign
governments for the weapons Israel most needs”. It is not
clear if that is sustainable.
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