U.S. Will Allow Delivery of 500-pound Bombs to Israel, an Official Says

The United States plans to authorize part of a weapons shipment to Israel that it had withheld in the spring over concerns about civilian casualties in Gaza, a U.S. official said on Thursday.

The official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that the United States would send 1,700 500-pound bombs that had been held up because they were part of a shipment that had also included 1,800 2,000-pound bombs, which the country has chosen not to ship to Israel.

President Biden halted the shipment in the spring to prevent the U.S.-made weapons from being used in Israel’s assault on the city of Rafah, in southern Gaza. It was the first time that Mr. Biden tried to influence Israel’s approach to the war by using his power to curtail arms.

The United States will continue to withhold 2,000-pound bombs out of concerns over the civilian deaths or injuries that they could cause in Gaza, the official said. A New York Times investigation in December found that American 2,000-pound bombs were responsible for some of the worst harm to Palestinian civilians since the war in Gaza began after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7.

A crater in Jabaliya, a densely populated area just north of Gaza City, in October. The crater was created by a 2,000-pound bomb, according to experts and an analysis by The New York Times.Credit…Anas al-Shareef/Reuters

The news that some of the shipment would be released was earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal and Axios.

Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, alluded to the U.S. decision on the bombs on Thursday in a statement from his office that summed up a meeting with Brett McGurk, the top White House official for Middle East affairs. During their meeting on Wednesday in Tel Aviv, Mr. McGurk updated Mr. Gallant “regarding the delivery of critical munition, some of which will be sent to Israel in the coming days,” the statement said.

When Mr. Biden held up the shipment, he had been under pressure to limit or halt all arms shipments to Israel, something he had refused to do because of his strong support for the effort to destroy Hamas.

In the first two weeks of the war, roughly 90 percent of the munitions Israel dropped in Gaza were satellite-guided bombs of 1,000 to 2,000 pounds, according to a senior U.S. military official. The rest were 250-pound small-diameter bombs.

Analysts note that while smaller bombs have less explosive power than the 2,000-pound bombs, they can still cause significant injury and death, especially in areas with little protection, like tent camps.

The 250-pound GBU-39, which is also American-made, has increasingly become the weapon of choice for the Israeli military. Two of them were used in a deadly strike on a tent camp in Rafah on May 26 that Gazan health authorities reported killed 45 people.