The State Department has told Congress that it intends to approve $8 billion in purchases of U.S.-made arms by Israel, the department’s office in charge of arms transfers said on Friday.
It could be the final set of arms transfers to Israel by President Biden, and represents a marker of continued support from the administration to a longtime ally even as the rising death toll in Israel’s war in Gaza has fueled growing opposition within his party to further weapons sales.
The weapons package includes artillery shells, small-diameter bombs, missiles for fighter jets and helicopters, and GPS guidance systems for bombs, according to the informal notification provided to two committees of Congress. Many of the weapons are not for immediate use but instead would go into a manufacturing pipeline, with delivery possibly taking years.
Israel would use money provided by the United States to buy the weapons. The annual aid had been about $3 billion, but Mr. Biden increased that amount after Israel began waging war in Gaza following terrorist attacks by Hamas that left about 1,200 dead on Oct. 7, 2023.
During the informal notification period, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee are expected to review the proposed sales and ask questions of the State Department. They can hold up the transfers if they have doubts. The top Democrats on both committees have been more skeptical of arms transfers to Israel, while the top Republicans have quickly granted approval.
Once the four top members grant approval to the State Department, the agency would give formal notification to Congress, which essentially means the proposed sales will go through. Congress would need a two-thirds vote in each house to pass a resolution blocking the sales.
The informal notification was reported earlier by Axios.
Weapons transfers to Israel have been a contentious issue that has dogged Mr. Biden among liberals. In the presidential election in November, some progressive voters and some Muslim American voters said they could not bring themselves to back Mr. Biden because of his steadfast support of Israel.
The Israeli military, supplied with U.S. weapons, has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians, including many civilians, during the war, according to the health ministry in Gaza. Critics of Israel’s conduct of the war have beseeched Mr. Biden to withhold weapons aid to Israel to pressure it to curb its military operations, which have demolished most of Gaza.
Mr. Biden and his top aides, including Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, have tried to walk a fine line, sometimes criticizing Israeli actions even as they have said Israel has the right to defend itself. At one point, Mr. Biden said he was withholding a single shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel to try to dissuade it from destroying Rafah, a city in southern Gaza, but the Israeli military reduced most of Rafah to rubble anyway.
At another point, the Biden administration held up an order of 24,000 assault rifles out of concern that settlers in the West Bank could use the rifles in violence against Palestinians there.
President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has a record of strongly backing Israel and supported robust weapons shipments to the Jewish state in his first administration, has been urging Israel and Hamas to enter into a cease-fire deal before he takes office this month.
American officials working under Mr. Biden are trying to make a cease-fire deal now to get hostages abducted in the Oct. 7 attacks freed.
