US officials went line-by-line through arms shipments to Israel with defense minister to rebut Netanyahu’s delay claim
https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/26/politics/us-arms-shipments-israel/index.html
American officials went through a line-by-line explanation of hundreds of US weapons shipments to Israel in meetings this week with the country’s defense minister in a bid to rebut claims from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that President Joe Biden was delaying military assistance.
The meetings with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant came amid a growing spat between the Biden administration and Netanyahu, who has claimed that armaments are being delayed to the intense frustration of Washington. It was the latest spat between the two allies, which have diverged over Israel’s war tactics in Gaza.
US officials meeting Gallant this week brought in experts from across the government to engage in “professional to professional” discussions that ticked through in exacting detail the current state of munitions shipments.
“We had a very good opportunity to sit down with experts from across our system and go through every single case,” a senior US administration official said. “This is one of the most complex security partnerships we have, one of the most multifaceted.”
The official attributed Netanyahu’s claims – made multiple times over the course of the last week, including in a video in English released on social media – to “misunderstandings” on the Israelis’ part.
“There’s stuff happening literally every day across the US government and across the Israeli system, and we were able to go through everything,” the official said, adding the US was able to clarify the status of certain shipments as they make their way through a complex delivery process.
There was “real progress” in developing an understanding of that process and of prioritizing certain cases, the official said, adding there was an agreement to identify any “inefficiencies” going forward.
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Israel, US ‘very good at theatre’, analyst says of apparent dispute between allies
Analyst Rami Khoury says while there was a “little hiccup” in what he called the massive flow of weapons and money from the US to Israel amid the ongoing war in Gaza, it was not a major issue between the two close allies.
“The US and Israel are very good at theatre, and this is theatre that we’re watching right now,” Khoury, a professor at the American University of Beirut, told Al Jazeera.
“There’s no closer relationship in the last half-century anywhere in the world probably than the US’s support for Israel. It’s domestic theatre,” he said of the apparent dispute between the two allies over the speed of weapons transfers.
Khoury pointed out that back in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in “big trouble” and it played well to be seen to be tough with the US. “He’s fighting with people in his own party. He’s fighting with his own military leaders. He’s fighting with people all around the world,” Khoury said.
“Netanyahu has almost run out of people that he can have a feud with. But by acting like a tough guy who stands up to the US and gets whatever Israel needs from the US, he strengthens some part of his base in Israel. And he’s going to need that because his coalition is a little bit shaky,” he said.
Ignoring Israel’s abuses gave ‘licence to harm’ Palestinian children: Envoy
Palestine’s envoy to the UN Riyad Mansour says he regrets it took so long for Israel to be added to the UN secretary-general’s “blacklist” of countries that commit abuses against children in armed conflict.
Speaking to a UN Security Council meeting held to discuss the blacklist, Mansour said that not adding Israel to the list earlier “was an abandonment of Palestinian children”, which Israel took as a “licence to harm them more”.
“It took a genocidal war against our people, an unprecedented crisis for our children, to finally add Israel to the list of shame this year,” he said.
