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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized the Biden administration for “withholding” weapons from Israel.
“When Secretary Blinken was recently here in Israel, we had a candid conversation. I said I deeply appreciated the support the U.S. has given Israel from the beginning of the war, but I also said something else,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a video Tuesday.
“I said it’s inconceivable that in the past few months, the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel, America’s closest ally,” he said.
In response Tuesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the administration doesn’t know what Mr. Netanyahu is talking about.
“We just don’t,” she said. “There was one particular shipment of munitions that was paused, you’ve heard us talk about that many times.”
She said the administration is having “constructive discussions” with the Israelis to release that shipment.
“There are no other pauses, none. No other pauses in place,” Ms. Jean-Pierre said. “Everything else is moving in due process.”
President Biden paused one shipment of ammunition in May, with reports saying that it wasn’t connected to a previous threat by Mr. Biden to withhold weapons over Israel’s plans to invade Rafah in Gaza.
Mr. Netanyahu said Mr. Blinken assured him that the U.S. “was working day and night to remove these bottlenecks.”
“During World War II, Churchill told the United States, ‘Give us the tools, we’ll do the job.’ And I say, give us the tools and we’ll finish the job a lot faster,” he said.
But Mr. Biden has become increasingly critical of the way Mr. Netanyahu has been handling the war between Israel and Hamas.
He said in a Time magazine interview earlier this month that “there is every reason for people to draw that conclusion” — that Mr. Netanyahu has been prolonging the war for his own political self-preservation.
• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.
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