Before Hamas-led attack in Israel on October 7, 2023, Washington was exporting arms worth an average of $3 billion (€2.76 billion) per year to Israel. In absolute terms, however, Israel imports fewer arms from the US than other countries in the region.
Over the past five years, Israel has received 3.6% of US arms exports, while15% have gone to Saudi Arabia, 8.2% to Qatar and 4.5% to Kuwait.US fighter jets are playing an important role in Israel's massive military offensive in Gaza, as well as in strikes against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
According to a report by SIPRI, the US supplied thousands of guided weapons and missiles to Israel at the end of 2023. But the overall volume of Israeli arms imports was not significantly higher in 2023 than it was the previous year. The supply of heavy weaponry to Israel has been particularly contested this year, with protesters taking to the streets and blocking supply lines in an effort to halt military shipments.
In May, US president Joe Biden temporarily suspended the delivery of 2,000-pound (907 kilograms) and 500-pound bombs after expressing concern over the high number of civilian deaths in Gaza and the conduct of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), which have been accused of human rights abuses against Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, the death toll in the besieged enclave has exceeded 39,000 since Israel began its military campaign last year in response to the October 7 attacks. Nearly 2 million people, almost the entire population, have been displaced, and some 8,000 children suffer from malnutrition due to an ongoing blockade that UN experts are saying have cause famine to spread across the entire Gaza Strip.
After it was announced that the supply of 500-pound bombs to Israeli forces would be resumed, a US official told the Reuters news agency anonymously that the "main concern had been and remains the potential use of 2,000-pound bombs in Rafah and elsewhere in Gaza.
"In Rafah, Israeli airstrikes and shellings killed scores of refugees sheltering in the city, prompting the International Court of Justice to order Israel to "immediately halt its military offensive or any other action in the Rafah governorate."Even though the US suspended its supply of heavy bombs for a few weeks, this has not stopped the steady flow of US weapons across the Atlantic.
In a report last month, Reuters said that the US had "transferred at least 14,000 of the MK-84 2,000-pound bombs, 6,500 500-pound bombs, 3,000 Hellfire precision-guided air-to-ground missiles, 1,000 bunker-buster bombs, 2,600 air-dropped small-diameter bombs, and other munitions" between the start of the war in Gaza last October and the end of June.
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