Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced a resolution on Wednesday that will force a vote in Congress to block billions of dollars in offensive American weapons sales to Israel ― a significant escalation by the Vermont independent as the Biden administration continues to arm the country in its expanding military campaigns that most of the international community has decried.
Democratic Sens. Jeff Merkley (Ore.) and Peter Welch (Vt.) joined the lawmaker in sponsoring the Joint Resolutions of Disapproval, which Sanders described as essentially the only tool that Congress has to block American weapons transfers that don’t follow U.S. and international law.
The Pentagon notified Congress last month of five possible foreign military sales to Israel totaling more than $20 billion, a record-breaking series of potential arms transfers to a country that for almost a year now has used U.S. weapons to pummel Gaza and the Palestinian people in response to a deadly attack by Hamas. The Israeli military has also blocked most humanitarian aid from entering the territory, and has significantly escalated attacks in the occupied West Bank and neighboring Lebanon.
“Israel clearly had the right to respond to Hamas’ horrific terrorist attack on October 7th … But Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s extremist government has not simply waged war against Hamas. It has waged all-out war against the Palestinian people,” Sanders said in a statement. “Netanyahu has bombed hospitals and schools, starved children, destroyed infrastructure and housing stock, and made life unlivable in Gaza. The United States must end its complicity in this atrocity.”
The arms sales targeted in the resolution include $262 million in Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs), about $774 million in 120mm tank rounds, about $61 million in 120mm high-explosive mortar rounds, about $583 million in Medium Tactical Vehicles, and almost $19 billion in 50 new F-15IA aircraft, upgrade kits for existing F-15 aircraft, and associated weapons and parts.
The resolution’s fact sheet lays out some of the specific instances where Israel used U.S. weapons ― particularly JDAMs and 120mm tank rounds ― to indiscriminately bomb Palestinians, in violation of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act, the Arms Export Control Act (AECA), the Conventional Arms Transfer policy and international humanitarian law.
The weapons transfer would also violate one of the Biden administration’s own policies: the National Security Memorandum 20, or NSM-20, which required the State Department and Pentagon to investigate whether countries like Israel that receive U.S. military assistance are using it to break international law. Despite two government bodies concluding that Israel intentionally blocked aid to Gaza, Secretary of State Antony Blinken rejected their findings in his May report ― avoiding having to cut off weapons shipments to the country as required by law, according to a ProPublica investigation published this week.
“President Biden must stop acting like a bystander to the chaos in the Middle East. He has enabled, he can stop it, and he must stop it before the Israeli government finishes off the people of Gaza, destroys Lebanon, and drags our nation into a nightmarish, all-out war,” Nihad Awad, executive director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a Thursday statement.
“The Biden administration must leverage U.S. military aid to force a Gaza ceasefire deal on Netanyahu now, before it’s too late.”
The White House did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment, though Israel announced on Thursday that it just received an $8.7 billion military package from the U.S.
Once the Senate reconvenes in November, the Foreign Relations Committee will have five calendar days to consider the Joint Resolutions of Disapproval, as permitted by the AECA for foreign military sales to NATO and non-NATO allies like Israel. After that, Sanders can force a floor vote on a motion to discharge the resolution from committee and open it up for final passage. The vote only requires a simple majority, and the resolution’s privileged status prevents lawmakers from trying to amend or filibuster the legislation.
If the Senate passes the resolution, it would still have to be approved by the House and signed by Biden, who could veto the measure. Given the president’s unchanged public position on arming Israel with no red line, it’s unlikely that Sanders’ resolution will successfully block the weapons transfer.
The resolutions by Sanders, Merkley and Welch are “an appropriate, measured and sadly necessary response to a security partner’s repeated violations of U.S. and international law,” Dylan Williams, the Center for International Policy’s vice president for government affairs, said on Wednesday. “These senators should be applauded for taking concrete action to enforce the requirement that other countries only use American weapons for legitimate defense purposes and in accordance with the law of war.”
A June CBS poll revealed that a whopping 77% of Democrats and 61% of Americans overall want the U.S. to implement an arms embargo to Israel. The decision to move forward with sending Israel billions of dollars in weapons would go directly against what most Americans want, according to Josh Ruebner, policy director for the Institute for Middle East Understanding.
“There is real anger in this country ― especially among Democrats ― that our government keeps writing blank checks to Israel’s military to kill Palestinian civilians in Gaza, and they are demanding significant policy,” Ruebner told HuffPost. “They’ll be watching to see if their members of Congress vote in a way that represents them, or whether they continue with a broken status quo by signing off on another $20 billion weapons giveaway to Israel while millions of people here struggle to afford the basics of life ― health care, housing and education for their kids.”