After Canada banned selling more weapons to Israel last week, Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is set to travel to the US this Sunday to demand more weapons from Washington amid the war in Gaza.
According to a report by Axios, the Defense Minister of Israel Yoav Gallant is set to travel to the United States this coming Sunday to demand Washington more weapons sale to Israel amid its ceaseless war in Gaza.
“Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant will visit Washington and meet with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and other senior US officials for 72 hours on Sunday with a long list of US weapons Israel wants to receive in an expedited manner,” the report said. This would be Gallant’s first visit to Washington since he assumed office more than one year ago. As the report further revealed, one senior Israeli official has said that the requests include “purchasing more F-35 and F-15 fighter jets from the US as much as possible.”
Since the war in Gaza began back on October 7, Israel has relied heavily on US weapons supply, reportedly hundreds of shipments of different types of weapons that Israel has used against Gazans. Thanks to this endless source of weapons that the US has provided for Israel, the latter has killed more than 31,000 people in Gaza since October, including over 13,000 children.
In a phone call between Gallant and the US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin this past Tuesday, Gallant is reported to have said to Austin that he is bringing with him the director-general of the Ministry of Defense, retired Major General Eyal Zamir, who is in charge of Israel’s weapons purchases. Gallant stressed that he wants senior Pentagon officials to meet Zamir on the sidelines of the visit to discuss the technical details for Israel’s defense requests.
Will US do as Israel wishes this time?
Although the United States has been the biggest weapons provider for Israel since day one when the Gaza war started, there are growing oppositions inside Washington over Biden’s blind support for Tel Aviv during the Israel-Hamas conflict.
“Gallant’s visit comes as pressure mounts within the Democratic Party to limit the supply of US weapons to Israel. Many in President Biden’s party view Israel’s horrific bombing and siege of Gaza as genocide.” The report said in this regard.
Gallant is himself responsible for Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon. On 9 October, two days after the Hamas-led Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, Gallant announced a “complete siege” on Gaza. “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel; everything is closed … We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly,” he said.
According to a recent report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s arms transfers, between 2013 and 2022, nearly 68 percent of Israel’s weapons imports came from the US.
But while the flow of US weapons to Israel may continue, other Western countries have begun to change their policies and stop sending more weapons to Israel, a decision that will surely have effects on US military support for Israel. It was last week on Wednesday, for example, that Canada announced it will stop all arms shipments to Israel.
The Netherlands, Japan, Spain and Belgium are among other US allies that have already suspended arms sales to Israel amid its brutal military offensive in the Gaza Strip.
