By Zeke Miller and Will Weissert | Associated Press
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has ended his predecessor’s hold on sending 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, lifting a pressure point that had been meant to reduce civilian casualties during the U.S. ally’s war with Hamas in Gaza that is now halted by a tenuous ceasefire.
In a post on his Truth Social network Saturday, Trump said, “A lot of things that were ordered and paid for by Israel, but have not been sent by Biden, are now on their way!”
“We released them today,” Trump said of the bombs. He told reporters on Air Force One, “they’ve been waiting for them for a long time. You know, they’ve been in storage for a long time and we released them today to Israel.”
Then-President Joe Biden halted the delivery of the large bombs in May as part of an effort to keep Israel from launching an all-out assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah. A month later, Israel did take control of the city, but after the vast majority of the 1 million civilians that had been living or sheltering in Rafah had fled.
“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden told CNN in May when he held up the weapons. “I made it clear that if they go into Rafah … I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities, that deal with that problem.”
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The Biden pause had also held up 1,700 500-pound bombs that had been packaged in the same shipment to Israel, but weeks later those bombs were delivered.
Trump’s action, five days into his term, comes as he has celebrated the first phase of a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel that has paused the fighting and seen the release of some hostages held by Hamas in Gaza in return for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Negotiations have yet to begin in earnest on the more difficult second phase of the deal that would eventually see the release of all hostages held by Hamas and an enduring halt to the fighting.
The Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened to resume its war against Hamas — which launched a massive assault against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 — if the remaining hostages are not released.
