US Secretary of State Antony Blinken used emergency authority to approve the sale of $147.5 million of 155 mm artillery shells to Israel on 30 December, bypassing the standard congressional review for arms sales for the second time since the start of the war on Gaza.
A State Department spokesman said on Friday that
“given the urgency of Israel’s defensive needs, the secretary notified Congress that he had exercised his delegated authority to determine an emergency existed necessitating the immediate approval of the transfer.”
Earlier this month, Blinken used the same emergency process to approve the sale of 14,000 tank shells, worth more than $106 million, to Israel.
The emergency sale of artillery shells comes as Israel’s military intensifies its bombing campaign in Gaza.
Earlier this week, on Christmas Eve, Israeli forces bombed the Meghazi camp, killing 86 Palestinians in one strike.
Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy excused the death toll by telling Sky News the army had used an “incorrect munition.”
But he refused to apologize for the loss of life and did not say what type of munition was used, despite being pressed several times by Sky News presenter Niall Paterson.
Israel has regularly used 2,000 lb US-made bombs to target residential neighborhoods in Gaza.
Continued instances of this sort cast doubt on the sincerity of the White House’s rhetoric calling for Israel to refrain from killing Palestinian civilians in such huge numbers.
Josh Paul, a former State Department arms expert who resigned in protest in October, told The Washington Post that Blinken’s decision to rush these unguided munitions enables Israel to continue the type of operations in Gaza that have “led to so many Palestinian civilian deaths.”
“This is shameful, craven, and should frankly turn the stomach of any decent human being,” he said.
A Washington Post analysis found that Israel’s war against Gaza has been more devastating than any other 21st-century conflict.
International outrage continues in response to the Israeli bombing campaign, with South Africa invoking the Genocide Convention at the International Court of Justice the same day Blinken approved the additional weapons sale.