By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS |10 November 2024 (IDN) — After US presidential elections on November 5, a question floating around the US and Middle Eastern capitals relates to Gaza, which has been devastated largely by US-supplied weapons, including fighter planes, air-to-ground missiles, battle tanks, armored personnel carriers (APCs) and 2,000-pound unguided bombs.
Will the incoming Trump administration restrict weapons deliveries to Israel or continue the outgoing Biden administration’s policy of unrestrained arms supplies to the Netanyahu government causing more deaths and destruction?
The guessing game continues.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the casualties so far include 43,391 plus killed, and at least 102,347 wounded in the Gaza Strip, including 59% women, children, and elderly, as of October 21, 2024.
The issues before American voters at the presidential elections last week, where the Democratic Party candidate Kamala Harris lost to Republican candidate Donald Trump, included the rising cost of living, the unrestricted flow of thousands of asylum seekers across the border into the US and Biden’s refusal to restrict arms sales to Israel despite country-wide protests.
Democrats ignored Gaza
The headline in an op-ed piece in the New York Times November 10 by Peter Beinart, a contributing Opinion writer and an editor-at-large of “Jewish Currents”, was on target: DEMOCRATS IGNORED GAZA, AND IT BROUGHT DOWN THEIR PARTY.
“Over the past year, Israel’s slaughter and starvation of Palestinians – funded by US taxpayers and live-streamed on social media—has triggered one of the greatest surges in progressive activism in a generation,” he wrote.
Many Americans roused to action by their government’s complicity in Gaza’s destruction have no personal connection to Palestine or Israel, Beinart pointed out.
Like many Americans who protested South African apartheid or the Vietnam war, their motive is not ethnic or religious. It is moral, he declared.
Dr. Natalie Goldring, who represents the Acronym Institute at the United Nations, on conventional weapons and arms trade issues, told IDN the US government has been a stalwart supporter and defender of the Israeli government, and has been its most significant weapons supplier for several decades.
“But the reality is that US weapons supplies give Israel the capacity to continue prosecuting wars on multiple fronts. The Israeli government has defined its actions as self-defense in the aftermath of the horrendous Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023. Instead of acting in self-defense, the Israelis have carried out widespread indiscriminate attacks that have disproportionately affected civilians,” she said.
$23 billion in US military aid to Israel
The Watson Institute recently documented nearly $23 billion in US military aid to Israel and what it describes as related US operations from the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023 through the end of September 2024. These weapons included 2000-pound bombs, artillery shells, and precision-guided munitions. [See https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2023/2024/Costs%20of%20War_US%20Support%20Since%20Oct%207%20FINAL%20v2.pdf]
“If the US government were willing to halt transfers of US weapons and ammunition to the Israeli government, that would cover the vast majority of weapons Israel receives. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) for example, from 2019-2023, the United States was responsible for nearly 70 percent of the dollar value of Israeli arms imports.”
“It’s also important to remember that US weapons manufacturers have a profit motive in continuing providing massive supplies of weapons to Israel. Weapons manufacturers aren’t neutral participants in these processes.”
“Unfortunately, the prospects for change weren’t good before the US presidential election, and are probably worse now. It seems quite unlikely that President Biden would finally stand up to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and halt US arms transfers, for example.”
“And Prime Minister Netanyahu has little incentive to negotiate with President Biden, probably anticipating a friendlier reception from Donald Trump after his inauguration in January,” Dr Goldring declared.
Zain Hussain, a Researcher at SIPRI told IDN the US is the most important supplier of major conventional arms to Israel. In 2019-2023, the US supplied 69% of Israel’s imports of major arms. This was comprised of aircraft, armored vehicles and missiles, among other things.
The US, he said, sees Israel as a key strategic ally in the Middle East and a strong means of supporting US interests in the region. Enshrined in US law in 2008, it is committed to preserving Israel’s qualitative military edge in the region, which is Israel’s ability to counter and defeat any credible conventional military threat from states or from non-state actors, while sustaining minimal damages and casualties.
“As part of this consideration is the perceived need for Israel to have superior military means compared to other individual or possible coalition of states or non-state actors that could pose a credible conventional military threat to Israel.”
The US has committed to providing $3.8 billion a year in financial military aid to Israel between 2019 and 2028. The Israeli and US arms industries engage in deep cooperation in different fields, including missile defence. This can be seen in Israel’s three-tiered air defence system: the Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow, Hussain said.
Israel has been dependent on the US for key military capabilities. All active combat aircraft of the Israeli air force are of US origin. Israel has also relied on the US for the supply of certain missiles and munitions, and one of the most important aspects of Israel’s defence, its air defence systems, also involves cooperation with the US.
In times of conflict, US supplied arms have been crucial for Israel’s operations. In case of the current war in Gaza, US supplied aircraft, bombs and missiles have been indispensable for Israel’s operation, said Hussain.
Dr Goldring pointed out that at the beginning of November, the government of Türkiye submitted a letter to the UN Security Council calling for an arms embargo against Israel, including both weapons and ammunition.
The letter was signed by more than 50 states as well as the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. It cited the Israeli government’s violations of international human rights and humanitarian law and argued that any country that sold weapons to Israel was complicit in genocide.
“Given that the US has a veto in the Security Council, the call for an international arms embargo on Israel is unlikely to be successful. Even so, the letter to the Security Council is an important statement about the international community’s growing concern about the nature and extent of Israeli attacks,” declared Dr Goldring.
Meanwhile, in a statement released November 10, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, welcomed the reported freeze on the delivery of bulldozers to Israel as an “implicit admission” by the Biden administration that the far-right Netanyahu government is using that equipment in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
CAIR said the freeze on the bulldozers used in ethnic cleansing must be followed with an end to weapons deliveries to Israel.
[NOTE: An editorial in the Israeli media outlet Haaretz today admitted that the “Israeli military is conducting an ethnic cleansing operation in the northern Gaza Strip.”]
According to Israeli media, the delivery of 130 D9 bulldozers to Israel was reportedly frozen because of use of the bulldozers to demolish homes in Gaza and Lebanon.
According to the Watson report, U.S. arms deliveries to Israel, October 7, 2023 to September 2024 included the following:
4,127,000 kilograms JP-8 jet fuel; 57,000 155mm artillery shells; 36,000 rounds of 30mm cannon ammunition; 20,000 M4A1 rifles; 13,981 anti-tank missiles; 8,700 (Mk82) 500-pound bombs; 3,500 night vision devices; 3,000 Joint Direct Attack Munitions; 14,100 (Mk84) 2,000 pound unguided bombs; 3,000 laser-guided Hellfire missiles; 1,800 (M141) bunker buster bombs; 2,600 250-pound small diameter bombs; 200 Switch Blade (Series 600) drones; more than 100 Skydio X series drones and 75 Joint Light Tactical Vehicles (JLTV). [IDN-InDepthNews]
