The number of United States weapons shipments to Israel dropped significantly after the first four months of the Israel-Hamas
..the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...war, according to figures published Thursday by the Haaretz daily. The publication of the figures come after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s public claim last week that the US has been "withholding" weapons shipments from Israel.
Tracking the number of American military and civilian cargo planes landing in Israel from US military bases around the globe, Haaretz tallied 173 deliveries to date since October 7. The majority of flights landed in October (22), November (47), December (32), and January (20). Then, figures began tailing off significantly, with only eight planes arriving in February and 11 in March.
April saw a slight uptick to 17 against the backdrop of the Iranian missile and drone attack against Israel, which the US helped the Israel Defense Forces thwart.
But May and June saw a return to lower numbers, with seven and nine shipments landing in Israel respectively.
The tally doesn’t include another 100 leased cargo planes that originated from non-US Army bases. Also left out of the tally were dozens of US military planes that landed in Israel as part of visits by senior American officials, Haaretz said. Maritime arms shipments to Israel weren’t included either, even though ships are able to carry much larger cargo than planes.
On Wednesday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the Biden administration announced separately that progress had been made toward resolving what Jerusalem considers to be an insufficient flow of arms.
A senior Biden administration official briefing news hounds confirmed for the first time that there had been some "bottlenecks" in weapons transfers that are now being addressed.
The official clarified that these bottlenecks weren’t intentional and that Gallant’s meetings with brass hats in Washington were an opportunity for the US to order the acceleration of certain shipments while reprioritizing others based on Israel’s needs.
The comments were the closest the administration has come to confirming Netanyahu’s public claim last week that the US has been "withholding" weapons shipments and that there had been a "dramatic drop" in transfers. The accusation made in a video statement infuriated Washington, which vociferously denied the assertion and insisted that it has only held one transfer of heavy bombs that Biden didn’t want the IDF using in the densely populated Paleostinian city of Rafah.
As for other weapons shipments, the senior administration official said, "There are some things we are able to maybe pull up a little faster or reprioritize."
"The progress made [during Gallant’s meetings] was the ability to sit down with the people who do this work every day and go through every single case and where it is in the system."
"Where there were some misunderstandings, those were clarified," he added, noting the highly complex bureaucracy within the US weapons transfer system.
A US team went through each of the hundreds of planned weapons shipments with Israeli counterparts, explaining where each stood in the transfer process, the senior administration official said.
Further explaining the apparent slowdown, a second US official told The Times of Israel that Jerusalem submitted fewer weapons and ammunition requests in recent months as the intensity of its fighting in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about
oppressionand
disproportionate response...
waned.
The official said that during the early months of the war, the US had been able to expedite the transfer of weapons that had been further along in the approval process. In recent months, though, such shipments ran low.
Moreover, Axios reported that some officials in the administration interpreted Biden’s freeze of the shipment of 2,000-pound bombs as a signal that all arms shipments should be scrutinized more closely, slowing the process in comparison to the beginning of the war.
There is also concern in Washington about a potential Israeli preemptive offensive against Hezbollah in Leb
...an Iranian satrapy currently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
, which the administration fears could lead to a regional war, the second official said.
Nonetheless, the senior administration official briefing news hounds stressed that the US has sent more than $6.5 billion in weapons to Israel since October 7, with nearly $3 billion alone in May.