US Congress grapples with Israel funding deadlock
▶ Partisan rifts are holding up two packages as Gaza war rages on
Speaker of the Israeli Knesset Amir Ohana was in Washington to mark the inaugural House-Knesset Parliamentary Friendship Group, yet another indication of how the US is, by every metric, Israel’s strongest ally.
But even bipartisan support for Israel has not resulted in increased funding for the war in Gaza.
The Israeli delegation’s visit came during a dramatic week in Congress, with partisan rifts holding up two Israel funding packages – both doomed to remain “still, just a bill”. Even with growing concern from progressive corners of Washington over the war, the vast majority of politicians in the US capital have insisted on increasing support for Israel.
After months of negotiations, the Senate at the start of the week seemed close to a breakthrough with the White House in reaching an agreement on a $118 billion funding package for Israel, Ukraine and immigration reform for America’s southern border.
But Republicans in the House of Representatives, who accuse President Joe Biden’s administration of enabling a mass migration crisis at the southern border, assured that the Senate package would be “dead on arrival” when it reaches the lower chamber for a final vote.
Following that opposition from the House, many Senate Republicans made a U-turn on the bill they helped to negotiate. The conservative party has since spiralled into an internal blame game over the stalemate.
But Mr Biden pointed the finger at Donald Trump, his presumed Republican challenger in the presidential election.
“Because Donald Trump thinks it’s bad for him politically. He’d rather weaponise this issue than actually solve it,” Mr Biden said.
Republican James Lankford said on the Senate floor: “I had a popular commentator four weeks ago that I talked to that told me flat out, ‘if you try to move a bill that solves the border crisis during this presidential year, I will do whatever I can to destroy you, because I do not want you to solve this during the presidential election’.”
He added that the commentator “has been faithful to their promise”.
Meanwhile, the House also failed on Tuesday to pass a Republican $17.6 billion Israel supplemental funding bill in a 250-180 vote.
Republican Congressman David Kustoff, speaking alongside the Israeli delegation, said the vote was “a temporary setback”. Despite it picking up a few notable Democratic votes, including from former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Mr Biden had warned he would veto the stand-alone Israel bill had it passed.
Some progressive Democrats, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, opposed the legislation. But for most of the representatives voting against these bills, their vote has everything to do with the partisan split over the bigger deal in the Senate.
Gregory Meeks, the highestranking Democrat on the House foreign affairs committee, voted against the Israel-only bill, despite saying Washington “urgently needs to help Israel defend itself”.
He says “Israel funding should not be used for political ploys” amid Republican rejections of the broader Senate package. “We are cynically being asked by the GOP to support an Israel-only supplemental because they are taking orders from Donald Trump, who seeks chaos on our border and success for [Russian President] Vladimir Putin,” Mr Meeks said.
House armed services committee ranking member Adam Smith justified his “nay” vote on the stand-alone.
“I voted against the standalone supplemental bill for Israel today because I cannot support a national security supplemental that abandons Ukraine and fails to provide humanitarian assistance for Palestinians in Gaza,” Mr Smith said.
“We are facing many national security threats across the globe. These challenges are increasingly interconnected, and we must advance a US national security strategy that supports all these interests in lock step to be in the best position to succeed.”