The US State Department has "unofficially" notified Congress of a proposed $8 billion deal with Israel that would include ammunition for fighter jets and attack helicopters, as well as artillery shells.
This was reported to Axios by sources.
This comes amid claims by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters in recent months that Biden has imposed a tacit “arms embargo” on Israel.
Some Democrats have pushed for the administration to sell weapons to Israel depending on how it conducts its military operations and how the humanitarian situation in Gaza is addressed, but Biden has refused to do so.
The sources said the deal is long-term. Some of the ammunition production and delivery could be covered by existing US stockpiles, but most of it would take a year or more to deliver.
The publicationʼs sources said the arms sale, which still needs to be approved by the House and Senate foreign relations committees, includes AIM-120C-8 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles for fighter jets to protect against aerial threats, including drones.
The proposed deal also includes 155mm artillery shells and AGM-114 Hellfire missiles for attack helicopters, small diameter bombs, JDAM kits that convert “silent bombs” into precision munitions, 500-pound warheads and bomb fuses.
War between Israel and Hamas
A new escalation of the war has been ongoing since October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants launched a massive rocket attack on southern and central Israel, invaded the countryʼs territory, and killed 1 195 civilians.
The attack killed over 1 200 people, and over 250 were taken hostage and taken to Gaza. Some were released, others are dead. In response, Israel launched a military operation in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas claims that more than 40 000 Gazans have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced during the Israeli operation. These figures cannot be verified, especially regarding the number of dead. Hamas does not separate civilians from militants in its statistics.
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