Israel secures $8.7 billion weapons package from US – Defense Ministry

Washington did not acknowledge the transfer of military aid

The US has given Israel an $8.7 billion tranche of military aid, the majority of which will be used to top up the country’s depleted air defense stocks, the Israeli Defense Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

The package includes $3.5 billion already received by Israel and set aside for “critical acquisitions,” and $5.2 billion for the Iron Dome missile defense system, David’s Sling surface-to-air missile system, and a “high-powered laser defense system currently in its later stages of development,” the ministry’s statement read.

The announcement came after the director general of the Israeli Defense MInistry, Eyal Zamir, met with US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Amanda Dory at the Pentagon earlier on Thursday.

The Pentagon acknowledged the meeting but did not mention any discussion of military aid. Funding for the package likely came from a $95 billion foreign aid bill signed by US President Joe Biden in April. The bill allocated $14.5 billion for Israel on top of the roughly $3 billion in annual military aid that the US already gives to the Jewish state.

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Last month, the US State Department announced that  $3.5 billion of this  $14.5 billion war chest had been given to Israel to spend on US-made weapons. This is presumably the same $3.5 billion mentioned in the Israeli Defense Ministry’s statement.

Israel has been at war for almost a year, with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) battling Hamas militants in Gaza since last October, and opening a second front against Hezbollah paramilitary forces in Lebanon this month. Israeli forces have killed 41,534 people in Gaza, the majority of them women and children, according to the latest figures from the enclave’s health ministry. Hundreds of people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon since last week, with more than 550 dying since Monday, according to the country’s health ministry.

Israel declared war on Hamas after the militant group stormed Israeli settlements in a surprise attack last October 7, killing around 1,100 people and taking around 250 hostages to Gaza. At the same time, the IDF and Hezbollah fought a low-intensity campaign along the Israel-Lebanon border until thousands of communications devices used by the group simultaneously exploded in an apparent Israeli sabotage operation. This wave of explosions opened a “new phase” in Israel’s war, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said last week, before the air campaign began.

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Less than a day before the Israeli side announced the latest package of military aid, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, British Defense Secretary John Healey, and Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles issued a joint call for a 21-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. 

“We now face the risk of an all-out war, another full-scale war, which could be devastating for both Israel and Lebanon,” Austin said.

In an address to the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called on the US to cease deliveries of military aid to Israel, accusing Washington of providing the IDF with “deadly weapons that it used to kill thousands of innocent civilians, children and women.”