Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin affirms throughout a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense hearing on the Department of Defenses’ financial year 2025 spendingplan demand at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
May 8 (UPI) — Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin verified Wednesday that the United States has stoppedbriefly sendingout a delivery of bombs to Israel over issues of its impending ground intrusion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
Responding to Republican concerns about the reports on the matter throughout a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on the 2025 Defense budgetplan, Austin repeated that the United States’ dedication to Israel’s defense is “ironclad” and that the stoppedbriefly delivery of weapons was for re-evaluation.
“We’re going to continue to do what is required to guarantee that Israel has the indicates to protect itself, however that stated, we are presently examining some near-term security help deliveries in the context of unfolding occasions in Rafah,” he stated, including that they have not made a choice on the matter.
The hearing was held days after it was reported that a delivery of bombs, consistingof 2,000-pound bombs, hadactually been stopped, relatively in an effort to pressure Israel to reevaluate its looming intrusion of Rafah, a southern Gazan city were some 1.4 million Palestinians are approximated to be refuging, which is more than half of the enclave’s population.
Since the start of the war on Oct. 7 with Hamas’ bloody surprise attack on Israel, the United States hasactually been totally encouraging of its Middle Eastern ally, sendingout it billions of dollars in military support.
As the war has continued, ravaging the Palestinian enclave and ballooning a death toll into the 10s of thousands, the Biden administration hasactually increased its call on Israel to do more to safeguard Gazan residents.
Israel for months now has argued it requires to gointo Rafah to ferret out the staying Hamas warriors hiding in the city, as the damage of the Iran-backed militia is one of its tenets of success in the war.
However, the United States, along with other countries and the United Nations, has now freely voiced opposition to the ground project, caution that it might equivalent a humanitarian disaster.
On Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres explained the commonly anticipated attack to be “a tactical error, a political catastrophe and a humanitarian headache.”
Austin described that the United States hasactually been clear to Israel in its