June 27, 2024
The US provided
Israel with $6.5 billion in security aid since 7 October, according to a
Washington Post report on 26 June.
The Post
highlighted that nearly half of the aid flowed into Israel in May of this year.
“This is a
massive, massive undertaking,” an unnamed senior administration official who
revealed the amount told reporters.
The official
noted that US arms transfer experts sifted through “hundreds of separate items”
with counterparts accompanying Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on his
four-day visit to Washington, countering Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s allegations that the US is creating “bottlenecks” in arms transfers
to Israel.
“In terms of
bottlenecks, it is a complicated, bureaucratic system that we have for good
reason … making sure we fully fulfill all of our obligations to Congress, laws,
procedures and regulations,” the official said. They further acknowledged that
“there are issues on the Israeli side, in terms of things they might want,
which might not have been totally clear.”
The discussion
of US arms transfers to Israel was a topic of discussion for Gallant during his
diplomatic trip to Washington. Speaking during a press briefing on Tuesday, the
defense minister said, “Our ties with the United States are the second-most important
element for Israel’s security,” after Israel’s own military.
“We need
American diplomatic and political support, power projection, supply of
munition, and more,” Gallant said. He added that the two parties made
“significant progress” and that “obstacles were removed and bottlenecks were
addressed in order to advance a variety of issues, and more specifically the
topic of force build-up and munition supply.”
Earlier this
month, Netanyahu bashed the US over allegedly withholding weapons aid to
Israel.
“It’s
inconceivable that in the past few months, the administration has been
withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel,” the Israeli premier said.
“Israel, America’s closest ally, fighting for its life, fighting against Iran
and our other common enemies.”
A US official
was quoted as saying that “Biden’s team was angry and shocked by Netanyahu’s
ingratitude.”
“We genuinely do
not know what he is talking about,” White House Press Secretary Karine
Jean-Pierre said separately, adding that only one weapons shipment had been
withheld since the start of the war, while billions in other military aid
packages had continued to flow uninterrupted.
Israeli
airstrikes and artillery shelling pounded Gaza City’s Shujaiya neighborhood on
27 June as the army rolled into the area with its tanks and ordered
Palestinians to evacuate.
At
least seven were killed and 40 injured, including women and children, according
to Al Jazeera.
“Ambulance
crews were not able to reach the casualties due to the intense and ongoing
shelling on the neighborhood,” WAFA news agency reported on Thursday afternoon,
adding that “tens of thousands of civilians were forcibly displaced due to the
ongoing bombardment on various parts of Gaza City,” including residents of the
Shujaiya, Turkman, and Tuffah neighborhoods.
WAFA
reported that the displaced residents of the Gaza City neighborhoods have been
told to move south via the Salah al-Din Axis.
The
army’s evacuation orders called on residents to flee the area, warning that
Shujaiya would become a highly volatile combat zone. The army also published a
map of areas it marked as dangerous.
Residents
told Reuters, however, that Israel’s attacks on the neighborhood continued
relentlessly as people were trying to flee.
“We
were suddenly and intensively bombarded by Israel. We came out and we don’t
know where to go,” a displaced resident of Shujaiya told Al Jazeera.
The
Shujaiya neighborhood was subjected to heavy bombardment overnight prior to the
army’s incursion.
These
are the first Israeli ground operations in the Shujaiya neighborhood since the
early months of the war on Gaza.
The
north Gaza neighborhood is where the Israeli army has faced some of the
stiffest resistance since the start of the ground war on 27 October.
After
having claimed in January that Hamas had been dismantled in northern Gaza,
Israeli forces were forced to restart operations in several areas of the north
in recent months.
Israeli
troops pushed back into northern Gaza’s Zaytoun neighborhood on 19 June. The
army has launched several operations in Zaytoun since the start of the war and
has been unable to root out Hamas’ armed wing, the Qassam Brigades.
Israeli
forces seized the Rafah border crossing on 7 May and began pushing troops into
the southernmost city under heavy bombardment, displacing around a million
Palestinians. The army invaded Rafah under the pretext of the city being Hamas’
final stronghold.
It
is currently facing fierce resistance and is taking heavy losses in Rafah.
“There
is a lot of frustration among our soldiers in Rafah, they don’t understand what
they want and they feel like ducks in the shooting range,” former Israeli
defense minister and head of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, Avigdor Lieberman,
told Yedioth Ahronoth on Thursday.
The Israeli army has launched 6,142
attacks on Lebanese soil that have killed at least 543 people from 7 October to
21 June, according to an analysis by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data
Project (ACLED).
Three hundred of these attacks have
hit Aita al-Shaab, a Shia-majority village located one kilometer from the
border with Israel and which, in the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah war, saw 85 of its
homes destroyed.
Other towns regularly targeted by
the Israeli army include Ras al-Naqoura (246 attacks), which hosts the
headquarters of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL); the southern village
of Hula (219 attacks), where the Israeli army massacred dozens of unarmed men
between 31 October and 1 November 1948; Kfarchouba (218 attacks), the second
largest village in southern Lebanon; and the village of Kfar Kila (209
attacks).
Although most of Israel's attacks
have been concentrated in and around these southern villages, Israeli drones
and jets have hit the cities of Tyre and Saida several times, as well as
numerous locations in the Bekaa Valley in northern Lebanon.
According to reports in western
media, the near-daily airstrikes, artillery shelling, and indiscriminate use of
incendiary chemical white phosphorus by the Israeli army have made much of the
five-kilometer zone north of the border “uninhabitable.” More than 95,000
people in south Lebanon have been forcibly displaced as well, according to the
UN.
Although the ACLED claims that
Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah and other armed groups operating near
the border are responsible for only 1,258 attacks on Israeli soil, figures
released by the resistance on 13 June reveal that a total of 2,125 attacks had
been conducted since 8 October.
According to ACLED, many of these
have targeted the settlements of Kiryat Shmona (132 attacks), Margaliyot (91
attacks), and Metula (72 attacks). However, the Lebanese resistance reports
targeting Israeli settlements a total of 304 times, while over half of the
attacks launched since 8 October (1,373) have targeted border positions of the
Israeli army.
Other common targets for the
resistance have been military bases, barracks, and airfields.
According to Tel Aviv, Lebanese
attacks have killed at least 21 Israelis.
Hezbollah says its military actions
have displaced over 200,000 Israelis, forcing them to evict over 40 settlements
after striking as far as 35 kilometers into the occupied territories.
Over recent weeks, Israel has
intensified threats to expand the war against Lebanon in a bid to regain
control of its northern settlements, to the detriment of its US backers.
“We’re urgently seeking a diplomatic
agreement that restores lasting calm to Israel’s northern border and enables
civilians to return safely to their homes on both sides of the Israel–Lebanon
border,” US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters on 25 June following
a meeting with his Israeli counterpart in Washington.
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