Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who has been in Washington since June 23, claimed yesterday that he had made progress toward resolving what Israel considers to be an insufficient flow of arms from the United States to Israel. “During the meetings, we made significant progress. Obstacles were removed and bottlenecks were addressed … [regarding] munition supply,” Gallant said in a video statement from Washington in which he summed up four days of meetings with top U.S. officials, reported the Times of Israel.
In a subsequent briefing with reporters, a senior Biden administration official largely echoed Gallant’s remarks, confirming for the first time that there had been some “bottlenecks” in weapons transfers that are now being addressed. The official clarified that these bottlenecks weren’t intentional and that Gallant’s meetings with top officials in Washington were an opportunity for the U.S. to order the acceleration of certain shipments while reprioritizing others based on Israel’s needs. A second U.S. official told TOI that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s video statement of last week set back efforts to unfreeze a shipment of 2,000-lb bombs, with the administration unwilling to be seen as taking orders from the premier. As for other weapons shipments, the senior administration official said, “There are some things we are able to maybe pull up a little faster or reprioritize.”
At the same time, the Washington Post, also citing a senior administration official, reported that the U.S. has provided $6.5 billion in security assistance to Israel since its war with Hamas started Oct. 7, with nearly $3 billion approved in May. “This is a massive, massive undertaking,” said the official, who disclosed the totals as an indication of the depth and complexity of U.S. support for Israel.
To counter the Israeli charge that the Americans had placed “bottlenecks” in the arms flow—remarks repeated publicly over the past week by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and described as “perplexing” and “inaccurate” by the White House—U.S. arms-transfer experts went through “hundreds of separate items” with counterparts accompanying Gallant on his four-day visit, the official said.
