The Biden administration paused a shipment of arms to Israel last week due to concerns about an imminent full-scale invasion of Rafah—the city in southern Gaza where more than 1.2 million civilians have taken refuge—despite strong international pushback.
Palestinians are walking between damaged buildings in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip.
The affected shipment included 1,800 2,000-pound bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs, unnamed senior Biden administration officials told several outlets, including the New York Times, Associated Press and Axios.
The decision was made due to concerns about the large explosives being used to carry out strikes in the densely populated city of Rafah—where more than half of Gaza’s population is believed to be sheltering, the AP report said.
According to the Times, future shipments are also under review, including conversion kits that can be added to unguided bombs to convert them into precision-guided weapons.
The Biden administration began reviewing the shipment of arms to Israel in April, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government appeared to press forward with plans for an assault on Rafah and the decision to halt the bomb shipment was made last week.
A final decision on what happens to this shipment of bombs is yet to be made.
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In a statement to reporters, an administration official said Israel had not “fully addressed” their concerns regarding Rafah, and “As Israeli leaders seemed to approach a decision point on such an operation, we began to carefully review proposed transfers of particular weapons to Israel that might be used in Rafah…We are especially focused on the end-use of the 2,000-lb bombs and the impact they could have in dense urban settings as we have seen in other parts of Gaza.”
This is a developing story.