President Biden has suspended shipments of bombs to Israel to prevent their use in the assault on the city of Rafah. Administration officials said that 1,800 2,000-pound bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs will be withheld and that the administration is evaluating whether to withhold future transfers.
The United States is by far Israel's largest arms supplier and has accelerated deliveries since the Hamas-led attacks on October 7. It's difficult to determine how much Israel received, but here's a closer look at what we know.
What happened after October 7th?
Since October 7, the United States has sent tens of thousands of weapons to Israel. According to Bradley, in most cases, it accelerated supplies already committed under contracts, many of which were approved by Congress and the State Department long ago. Bowman, military expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington.
“What the United States started doing almost immediately was sending an extraordinary flow of weapons,” said Bowman, a former U.S. Army officer.
According to a report by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, there have been so many weapons shipments to Israel that a senior Pentagon official said the Defense Department at times struggled to find enough cargo planes to deliver them.
How much has been made public?
Lawmakers and the media have recently criticized the lack of public information about the sales. The Defense Department has so far issued only two press releases, on December 9 and 29, on approving emergency military sales to Israel, while listing much of the military equipment sent to Ukraine in a regularly updated fact sheet.
As reported in these press releases, aid sent to Israel from October 7 to December 29 included 52,229 M795 155mm artillery shells, 30,000 M4 howitzer rocket charges, 4,792 M107 155mm artillery shells, and 13,981 M830A1 artillery shells from 120 mm. tank tours.