The Arms Pipeline to Israel

The Wall Street Journal notes How the U.S. Arms Pipeline to Israel Avoids Public Disclosure

The U.S. has sent tens of thousands of weapons including bombs and precision guided munitions to Israel since Hamas's Oct. 7 attacks using procedures that have largely masked the scale of the administration's military support for its closest Middle East ally, according to current and former U.S. officials.

The administration has organized more than 100 individual transfers of arms to Israel, but has only officially notified Congress of two shipments made under the major foreign weapons sales process, which are usually submitted to lawmakers for review and then publicly disclosed, U.S. officials said. In both cases, the administration used an emergency rule that avoids the review process.

The rest of the transfers have been approved using less public mechanisms available to the White House. Those include drawing from U.S. stockpiles, accelerating previously approved deliveries and sending weapons in smaller batches that fall below a dollar threshold that requires the administration to notify Congress, according to current and former U.S. officials.

"While the State Department has no legal obligation to notify below-threshold arms transfers, using this process to repeatedly end-run Congress—as sales of this quantity suggest—would violate the spirit of the law and undermine Congress's important oversight role" Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, told The Wall Street Journal.