WASHINGTON – The State Department has formally told Congress that it plans to sell more than $7 billion in weapons to Israel, including thousands of bombs and missiles, just two days after President Donald Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
The massive arms sale comes as a fragile ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas holds, even as Trump continues to tout his widely criticized proposal to move all Palestinians from Gaza and redevelop it as an international travel destination.
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The sale is another step in Trump’s effort to bolster Israel’s weapons stocks. In late January, soon after he took office, he lifted the hold on sending 2,000-pound bombs to Israel. The Biden administration had paused a shipment of the bombs over concerns about civilian casualties, particularly during an assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
Trump told reporters he released them to Israel “because they bought them.”
According to the State Department, two separate sales were sent to Congress on Friday. One is for $6.75 billion in an array of munitions, guidance kits and other related equipment. It includes 166 small-diameter bombs, 2,800 500-pound bombs, and thousands of guidance kits, fuses and other bomb components and support equipment. Those deliveries would begin this year.
The other arms package is for 3,000 Hellfire missiles and related equipment for an estimated cost of $660 million. Deliveries of the missiles are expected to begin in 2028 and their use will require additional training by the U.S. military.
Biden administration officials informally notified Congress about the sale last month. Officials at the time said some of the arms in the package could be sent from current U.S. stocks but the majority would take a year or several years to deliver.
The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee had raised concerns about the sale in January.
“We continue engagement with the administration on a number of questions and concerns,” a spokesman for Rep. Gregory Meeks told The Associated Press earlier this week. Its unclear if those issues had been resolved by the time the Trump administration provided formal notification Friday.
It is standard practice for the State Department to first notify the top four lawmakers on the foreign relations committees in the House and Senate if the price tag exceeds a certain amount before providing Congress with a formal notice. If Meeks or any of the other three lawmakers on the relevant committees were to object to a sale, traditionally the State Department would hold back on making a formal notice until the issues that member raised were resolved.
The announcement comes at a particularly sensitive time, but underscores Trump's staunch support for Israel. He and Netanyahu held talks Tuesday at the White House, where the two leaders discussed the fragile ceasefire and hostage deal in the Israeli-Hamas conflict and shared concerns about Iran.
Allies have expressed opposition to Trump's Gaza resettlement plan and expressed worries it could jeopardize the ceasefire deal.
But Trump insisted Friday that it was a simple “real estate transaction,” and that the U.S. is in “no rush to do anything.” He has suggested resettlement of Gaza’s residents could be permanent -- something even top members of his own administration have refuted.
Hamas identified three more Israeli hostages it plans to free as part of the ceasefire agreement, a sign the deal was moving forward despite the ongoing calls by the U.S. and Israel to relocate Gaza’s population after the war.
The three men, captured by Hamas during its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, are set to be freed Saturday, in the fifth exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinians jailed in Israel.
Israeli forces have withdrawn from most of Gaza, as specified by the ceasefire agreement, but remain in border areas.
____ Associated Press writer Farnoush Amiri contributed to this report.