US senators push back against sale of weapons to Israel

The Biden administration’s decision to bypass the congressional approval process to transfer weapons to Israel last week “undermines transparency” and “keeps Americans in the dark”, Democratic senators have said.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken approved the potential sale of M107 155mm projectiles “and related equipment” to Israel for $147.5 million on Friday, claiming the move was justified by an emergency.

But the move to bypass Congress was criticised at the weekend by Democratic senators Tim Kaine and Chris Van Hollen, who both sit on the foreign relations committee.

“The administration’s decision to repeatedly shortcircuit what is already a quick time frame for congressional review undermines transparency and weakens accountability. The public deserves answers,” Mr Van Hollen said.

Mr Kaine said: “Unnecessarily bypassing Congress means keeping the American people in the dark. We need a public explanation.”

Friday’s decision was the second time in a month that President Joe Biden’s government used executive authority to supply weapons to Israel.

On December 9, Mr Blinken approved the sale of about 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition worth more than $106 million.

The US is the top donor to Israel and “almost all US bilateral aid to Israel is in the form of military assistance”, a congressional report said in March last year.

It found the US “has provided Israel $158 billion (current, or non-inflation-adjusted, dollars) in bilateral assistance and missile defence funding”.

The US Congress closed the year in a stalemate over passing supplemental funding.

The Biden administration sought to pass a package of more than $100 billion for Israel and Ukraine.

But the aid failed to clear Congress before the holiday break owing to pushback from Republicans.

Mr Van Hollen leads a group of Democratic senators working on an amendment “to require that the weapons received by any country under the proposed national security supplemental are used in accordance with US law, international humanitarian law and the law of armed conflict”.

But the amendment seemed unlikely to gain traction among party leaders.

Chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee Ben Cardin told The National last month that he had concerns about how Mr Van Hollen’s proposal would affect “all decisions that we’ve made in Ukraine, as well as Israel if we’re changing the conditions”.