Israel and its ally the USA have smoothed over the dispute over ammunition supplies for the Jewish state. “Obstacles have been removed and bottlenecks eliminated,” said Israeli Defense Minister Joav Galant at the end of four days of talks in Washington. “Significant progress” has been made.
According to Israeli media, he criticized his Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for publicly expressing his displeasure over the issue instead of resolving it internally with the United States. “In every family – and we consider the American people our family – disagreements can arise,” Galant said. “But like in every family, we discuss our disagreements within our own four walls and remain united,” he said.
Netanyahu recently caused a new crisis in relations with President Joe Biden’s US government with a video in which he harshly attacked the US government for holding back a weapons shipment. Last Sunday, he reiterated his accusations at the weekly cabinet meeting: About four months ago, there was “a dramatic decline in weapons deliveries from the US to Israel,” Netanyahu complained. After the situation had not changed for months, he went public with this.
Since the massacre on October 7, 2023, which left more than 1,200 people dead, Israel has been taking tough military action against the Islamist Hamas in the Gaza Strip. At the same time, it is in conflict on its northern border with the Shiite Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, which has been attacking Israel with rockets, grenades and drones since the beginning of the Gaza war. The USA had recently withheld the delivery of heavy bombs to Israel in order to get its military to spare the civilian population during the offensive in the city of Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip.
Otherwise, the pace of supplying US weapons and ammunition to Israel is “normal,” the Wall Street Journal quoted a US State Department official as saying on Wednesday. Only when you compare it with the first months of the Gaza war, when the US massively boosted ammunition supplies to its ally, can you speak of a slowdown, it said.
However, after Galant’s meetings with his US counterpart Lloyd Austin and US security adviser Jake Sullivan, among others, a senior US State Department official admitted to the Times of Israel that there had been some bottlenecks in arms deliveries to Israel, but that these were not intentional and were now being resolved. Apart from the issue of the continued hold-up of heavy bombs, there are “some things that we may be able to move forward a little more quickly or reprioritize,” he added.
With his recent harsh accusations against Washington, Israel’s head of government “said something right on the one hand, but on the other hand gave a dramatic interpretation that lacks any basis,” the Wall Street Journal quoted Giora Eiland, a former Israeli national security adviser, as saying.
Benny Gantz, until recently a minister in Netanyahu’s war cabinet, also had clear words. “The unnecessary disputes that the prime minister creates for political reasons may earn him a few points with his supporters, but they damage the strategic relationship with the United States, which is an integral part of our ability to win the war,” he said in a statement. “In recent months, we have resolved many problems with our friends behind closed doors, including the issue of ammunition.”
Netanyahu recently announced that the intensive fighting phase in the Gaza war would soon end, which would give Israel the opportunity to move some of its troops north. There, in the border area with Lebanon, the intensity of the fighting with Hezbollah has recently increased significantly. There are concerns that the situation will escalate and turn into a full-blown war.
According to current and former Israeli officials, the Israeli military is keeping weapons stockpiles in reserve in the event of a possible war with Lebanon, wrote the Wall Street Journal. Irritation over the slowdown in US arms deliveries has therefore become a factor in possible future deployments in Lebanon.
The Foreign Office in Berlin has again called on all Germans in Lebanon to leave the country due to the situation. The situation on the border between Israel and Lebanon is very tense, the Foreign Ministry announced on Platform X on Wednesday. A further escalation could also lead to air traffic from Rafic Hariri Airport in Beirut being completely suspended, the new travel and security advice said. “Leaving Lebanon by air would then no longer be possible.”
