US Put an Ammunition Shipment to Israel on Hold Last Week: Report

Jerusalem: The Joe Biden administration placed a shipment of ammunition to Israel on hold last week, Axios reported, citing two Israeli officials. The report noted that this was the first time the US has taken such a step since the events of October 7 sparked the ongoing conflict in Gaza. The sudden decision to stop the shipment reportedly caused great concern in the Israeli government, with officials “scrambling” to figure out why Washington took such a step. The White House, the US State Department and the Pentagon have, thus far, not made any public comments on this development. 

Joe Biden, much like several other Israel-allied Western leaders, is facing considerable domestic pressure to halt military aid to Israel amid concerns that the nation is violating international law in Gaza as it carries out military operations aimed at dismantling Hamas and other affiliated groups in the Strip. 

More recently, the Biden administration has expressed growing concern over Israel's planned ground operation in Rafah. While the Benjamin Netanyahu administration insists that a ground operation in Rafah is necessary to wipe out the last vestiges of Hamas' power in Gaza, there have been widespread concerns over the humanitarian cost of such a move.

The UN recently warned that ground operations in Gaza would place hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees in the area at “an imminent risk of death.”

The US, while expressing similar concerns, has said that it could not approve of such an operation unless Israel presents a credible plan to minimise civilian casualties. AP recently reported that Israel had presented an evacuation plan to Washington that would involve moving the Palestinian refugees to tents set up in a safe area ahead of the Rafah operation.

Over one million refugees are sheltering in the area and it was not immediately clear how Israel would achieve the monumental task of getting all of them to move to this safe area.

To add to this, the report noted that the US side was not convinced by the plan Israel presented. Axios, in its report, also noted that Netanyahu may have hinted at underlying tensions with the Biden administration in a statement made on Holocaust Remembrance Day: "In the terrible Holocaust, there were great world leaders who stood by idly; therefore, the first lesson of the Holocaust is: If we do not defend ourselves, nobody will defend us. And if we need to stand alone, we will stand alone."