The White House has approved sending 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs and 500 MK82 500-pound bombs to Israel in a new arms transfer that it was not required to report to Congress, the Washington Post reported Friday.
Citing Pentagon and State Department officials familiar with the matter, the newspaper said the new arms shipment -- made under the authority of a law approved in 2009 -- is worth billions of dollars and comes at a time when President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are feuding over the Israeli leader's stated plan to launch an offensive in and around the city of Rafah.
Since at least February, Israel has warned it is preparing to send troops into the city where hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees have fled following their mass displacement by the war in Gaza.
The plan has sparked international worries. United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights has stated such an offensive "would incur massive loss of life and would heighten the risk of further atrocity crimes."
Netanyahu this reiterated his claims that he "has no choice" but to achieve total victory defined as the destruction of Hamas' military and governing capabilities in Gaza and the release of all Israeli hostages -- something that can only be done by destroying the militant group's remaining strongholds in Rafah.
Biden's early and effusive support of Israel at the beginning of the war in October has since been tempered by the loss of tens of thousands of civilian Palestinian lives and he has voiced skepticism about the planned Rafah offensive, telling Netanyahu over the phone that he has "deep concerns" over it.
But those concerns have not stopped his moves to supply Israel with more arms, including the transfer of MK84 2,000-pound bombs, which have been implicated in mass-casualty events during Israel's military campaign in Gaza.
The Post report of new arms transfers sparked protests from several quarters, including a strong statement in opposition from Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont.
"The U.S. cannot beg Netanyahu to stop bombing civilians one day and the next send him thousands more 2,000 lb. bombs that can level entire city blocks. This is obscene," Sanders said on X. "We must end our complicity: No more bombs to Israel."
Sanders charged Israel with blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza "as hundreds of thousands of children face starvation," adding, "And as a matter of fact that is in violation of American law. This must stop now."
The U.S.-based group Council on American-Islamic Relations also protested the report of the sale.
"We strongly condemn the Biden administration's unbelievable and unconscionable decision to secretly send hundreds of new 2,000-pound bombs and other weapons to support Benjamin Netanyahu's genocide," CAIR Deputy Executive Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said in a statement. "Arming a war criminal makes you a war criminal."
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