Jack Lew, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, does not believe the U.S.-Israeli relationship has “fundamentally” changed after the Biden administration decided to pause one military aid shipment to Israel.
Earlier this month, the administration opted not to provide Israel with a weapons package that included thousands of large bombs due to concerns with how the Israeli military could utilize them. While the move marked a seminal moment given it was the first time the administration has done that since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, it’s only one package that was paused, in comparison to the billions of dollars of military aid the U.S. has provided to Israel since the terrorist attack.
Lew, in an interview with an Israeli news outlet, argued that “fundamentally, nothing has changed in the basic relationship,” and he stressed that “everything else keeps flowing.”
The two sides have engaged in an extensive disagreement over Israel’s intended operations in Gaza that has spanned several weeks. The U.S., like several international organizations and other Western leaders, has publicly said they do not support a full-scale Israeli ground operation in Rafah, a city along the enclave’s southern border with Egypt, where more than 1 million Palestinians have sought refuge after being displaced from their homes due to the war.
The U.S. and Israel “need to keep talking through” issues that relate to the use of “large diameter bombs, heavy bombs, particularly when there’s the possibility of them being used in densely populated urban areas,” he told Channel 12.
Pentagon deputy spokeswoman Sabrina Singh affirmed on Monday that the department had not paused any additional weapons packages intended for Israel.
Israeli leaders have publicly shared their stance that they believe a full-scale operation is necessary to eliminate the threat posed by Hamas, while those who oppose such a decision have warned that there could be civilian casualties on a grand scale. The city is also Hamas’s last stronghold in Gaza.
Last week, the State Department released a highly anticipated report that found it “reasonable to assess” that Israel has used U.S. weapons in ways that caused excessive amounts of civilian casualties, despite uncertainty caused by Hamas’s use of “human shields.”
“The nature of the conflict in Gaza makes it difficult to assess or reach conclusive findings on individual incidents,” administration officials wrote in the key findings of a report to Congress. “Nevertheless, given Israel’s significant reliance on U.S.-made defense articles, it is reasonable to assess that defense articles … have been used by Israeli security forces since October 7 in instances inconsistent with its IHL [international humanitarian law] obligations or with established best practices for mitigating civilian harm.”
The report stopped short of concluding definitively that Israel has violated international humanitarian law, in part due to the difficulty of establishing the facts in such a fraught battle space, according to a senior State Department official.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted Israel has “hundreds of ongoing inquiries looking at different incidents that have taken place since October 7th” during a Sunday interview on CBS’s Face the Nation. “There are criminal investigations that are going forward.”
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The U.S. could still opt to provide Israel with the military aid package that has been held up.
Biden, last week, also maintained that the U.S. would continue to provide defensive military aid to Israel without delay. The Israelis relied on a coalition of allies, including the U.S., to help them repel an unprecedented attack from Iran last month.
