Trump Sends Israel 20,000 Rifles Withheld by Biden Over Settler Violence

The Trump administration has reportedly advanced a shipment of over 20,000 assault rifles to Israel that was paused by the Biden administration over concerns that the weapons would be used by settlers to further their illegal occupation of the occupied West Bank.

The State Department notified Congress of the sale totalling $24 million in value last month, Reuters reports. The recipient listed in the notification is the Israeli National Police.

However, it is widely known that Israeli officials overseeing Israel’s plans to expand its occupation and annexation of the occupied West Bank funnel such weapons to Israeli settlers, extremists who regularly terrorize Palestinians and steal their homes and land.

The sale comes as settler violence has increased in the occupied West Bank amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza. This campaign is only set to worsen, after Israeli leaders put out a statement earlier this week outlining the government’s intention of permanent annexation of the occupied West Bank, which a UN expert called a “serious and egregious violation of international law” that could lead to the collapse of the concept of international law itself.

Israeli media reported early in the Gaza genocide that the Israeli military was in the process of distributing hundreds of assault rifles to “civilian security squads,” with Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir reportedly prioritizing distributing the weapons to settlers.

In December 2023, reports found that the Biden administration was putting a pause on rifle shipments, after sending Congress notification of the sale weeks before. President Joe Biden had also paused a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel over concerns about the military’s invasion of Rafah, in southern Gaza — a city now completely leveled by Israeli forces after Biden failed to enforce his supposed red line over Israel’s invasion there.

Both the rifles and the bombs, a sale worth $2 billion, ultimately represented an extremely small proportion of the amount of weapons Biden sent to Israel in his last year in office. His administration sent a record number of weapons to Israel, including tens of thousands of other bombs, missiles, ammunition packages, and at least 14,000 2,000-pound bombs, in spite of research showing the massive death toll caused by dropping such bombs in civilian areas.

President Donald Trump has already lifted a pause on the shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel — a move that came as his administration gutted a U.S. initiative to reduce civilian harm in military operations. Trump had also lifted such restrictions in his first term, leading to a huge increase in civilian harm compared to previous administrations, research has shown — though the U.S. has a long history of disregarding civilian death.

On Thursday, the Senate voted down an attempt by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) to block the sale of $8.8 billion worth of weapons to Israel, including 35,000 2,000-pound bombs, and tens of thousands of other bombs and JDAMs.

Trump has also lifted sanctions placed by the Biden administration on some of the most extremist Israeli settler groups, seemingly finalizing the extremely few, and arguably inconsequential, actions Biden took to help enforce international law when it comes to Israeli massacres, occupation and apartheid.