US President Joe Biden must restrict the “illegal” shipment of weapons to Israel, several Democratic lawmakers have said.
“So long as Israel continues to restrict the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, the continued provision of US security assistance to Israel would constitute a violation of existing US law and must be restricted,” the lawmakers said in a letter to Biden, Haaretz reported on Sunday.
They pointed to the “catastrophic and devolving” humanitarian situation in Gaza and urged the president to enforce the Humanitarian Aid Corridor Act.
The letter emphasized that Israel is “ineligible to receive continued US weapons under Section 620I” as it continues to restrict the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people in Gaza.
“As the situation in Gaza continues to deteriorate, Congress and the White House need to make clear to Israel that we will enforce US law to protect Palestinian children from starvation in Gaza,” one of the letter’s signers, Congressman Joaquin Castro, told Haaretz.
Earlier this month, an independent and seven Democratic senators also sent a letter to Biden urging him to stop arming Israel as the regime continues efforts to block humanitarian aid to the Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
They also cited this same law and warned Biden that he must require Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop restricting humanitarian aid access or forfeit US military aid to Tel Aviv.
Following a visit to the Gaza border in January, Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, said he saw clear evidence that Israeli actions violated the law.
The law is “clearly triggered by the facts on the ground in Gaza, where we now have kids who have literally died of starvation, and hundreds of thousands of people on the verge of starvation, with 4 out of the 5 hungriest people in the world today in Gaza,” he added.
A recent report has revealed that the United States has quietly authorized over 100 separate weapons sales to Israel since the start of the Gaza war in early October, despite mounting alarm over the occupying regime’s genocidal campaign against the besieged territory.
The Biden administration bypassed Congress to initiate $106 million in sales of tank ammunition as well as $147.5 million of components needed to make 155 mm shells.
However, the 100 other weapons transfers were processed without any public debate because each fell under a specific dollar amount that required the executive branch to individually notify Congress.
Since the start of Israel’s aggression in October 2023, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 32,226 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and injured another 74,518 individuals.
