President Biden’s decision to curb offensive weapons shipments to Israel to signal U.S. opposition to a looming offensive against Palestinian militants in the besieged Gaza city of Rafah drew a defiant rebuke from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and talk of impeachment from Republican critics on Capitol Hill.
Accusing Mr. Biden of abandoning a longtime ally at a time of mortal peril, Republicans began drafting impeachment articles against Mr. Biden on Thursday. They said they had “no choice” after the president paused the shipment of 3,500 bombs and threatened to withhold additional weapons should Israel attack Rafah.
Some Democrats in Congress endorsed Mr. Biden’s argument that the Israeli offensive would deepen a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip and lead to many more civilian casualties. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had fled to Rafah for refuge.
Rep. Cory Mills, Florida Republican, said he was drafting impeachment articles accusing Mr. Biden of forcing Israel into a “quid pro quo situation” by holding U.S. military support ransom to coerce a U.S. ally into a behavior that would benefit him politically.
“These are the same accusations made against President Trump, which resulted in his impeachment by Democrats,” Mr. Mills said in a statement. Mr. Trump’s first impeachment accused him of withholding arms to Ukraine in return for political favors. “The same must happen for Joe Biden, which is why we’re drawing up articles of impeachment now.”
Sen. Tom Cotton, Arkansas Republican, also drew parallels to the 2019 Democratic-led impeachment, which failed to lead to a conviction in the Senate. “The House has no choice but to impeach Biden based on the Trump-Ukraine precedent of withholding foreign aid to help with reelection. Only with Biden, it’s true.”
SEE ALSO: Pentagon said no decision yet made about weapons for Israel that Biden halted
Mr. Netanyahu said Israel “will stand alone” to defeat Hamas if the U.S. withholds offensive weapons. He said it was imperative to ensure that Hamas militants make a final stand in Rafah and never again have the means to ambush Israelis as they did on Oct. 7.
Israel has ordered the evacuation of 100,000 Palestinians from Rafah and carried out “targeted strikes” on the eastern part of the city borders.
“If we have to stand alone, we will stand alone,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement released by his office. “If we need to, we will fight with our fingernails. But we have much more than fingernails.”
Israel’s top military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, told reporters that a U.S. arms embargo would not stop the Rafah operation. “We have what we need,” he told a news conference in Israel.
Defense Department officials said no final decision had been made about a shipment of 2,000- and 500-pound bombs that Mr. Biden put on hold over concerns that Israel could use them in a Rafah ground operation.
“We’re continuing to discuss with Israeli officials their plans as it relates to Rafah and addressing the Hamas threat,” Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters. “We’ve been very clear, both publicly and privately, that as Israel contemplates its operation in Rafah, we would expect it to be done in a way that takes civilian safety into account.”
Rafah’s population exploded to more than 1 million as Gaza residents moved south to flee the fighting in the northern section of the Palestinian enclave. The United Nations said at least 80,000 had fled Rafah since Monday, when Israeli troops moved in to occupy a border crossing point.
The Pentagon said the Israeli operations near Rafah so far appear to be “relatively limited.”
“We’ll continue to assess and monitor,” Gen. Ryder said. “We both agree that Hamas needs to be defeated, and we understand that Hamas has elements within Rafah, but it must be done in a way that takes the safety of civilians into account.”
Impeachment doubts
A few Republicans rejected the idea of impeaching Mr. Biden. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania said, “Impeachment is a nuclear option that should not be rolling off people’s tongues.”
Young liberals and many mainstream Democrats have been pressuring Mr. Biden to take a tougher stance on Israel. They say an estimated 35,000 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians, have died in Israel’s counterattack after Oct. 7. Parts of Gaza are experiencing “a full-blown famine,” a United Nations official recently said.
In a show of support for Palestinians and to express frustration with Mr. Biden’s support of Israel, college students demonstrated on campuses across the U.S. The unrest produced images of mass arrests, violent clashes with police, accusations of antisemitism and chants of “Genocide Joe.”
The Harvard Institute of Politics Youth Poll, conducted just before the wave of campus demonstrations and crackdowns, found that 18- to 29-year-old Americans overwhelmingly faulted Mr. Biden’s handling of the conflict in Gaza, with 76% disapproving and 18% approving.
“I believe it’s 100% a political calculation,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, said on CNBC. “I think we can all see that. It’s the same reason that he’s making the political calculation to call out antisemitism on the campuses, not to call out and speak without equivocation about the good versus evil here, the right versus the wrong.”
Some pro-Israel Democrats didn’t spare Mr. Biden any criticism. They said the halting of arms shipments sends a mixed message to a staunch ally.
“Hard disagree and deeply disappointing,” Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania wrote on X.
Rep. Ritchie Torres, New York Democrat, said Mr. Biden cannot claim his commitment to Israel is “ironclad” and then withhold aid. He said it “makes a mockery of our credibility as an ally.”
The White House said the U.S. would not be complicit in the deaths of civilians in Rafah.
“The U.S. will continue to provide Israel with all the necessities it needs to defend itself, but not specific weapons for a specific mission. We raised with Israel the consequences of using bombs with widespread destruction in densely populated areas. We still support the goal of destroying Hamas,” said John Kirby, the administration’s national security spokesperson.
Mr. Kirby said the U.S. is halting the shipment of offensive weapons that could be dropped on Rafah but will provide arms for Israel to defend itself against Hamas.
Administration officials say Mr. Biden withheld shipments of 1,800 2,000-pound bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs. The administration is reviewing whether to hold back further transfers, including guidance kits that convert so-called dumb bombs into precision-guided munitions.
In a CNN interview Wednesday, Mr. Biden doubled down on his plan to withhold the weapons from Israel.
“I’ve made it clear that if they go into Rafah — they haven’t gone into Rafah yet — if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities, to deal with the problem,” Mr. Biden said in the CNN interview.
Devastating
Caroline Glick, a former assistant foreign policy adviser to Mr. Netanyahu, said Mr. Biden’s decision could devastate Israel.
“Israel has been betrayed more than abandoned. If we had been abandoned, the administration would have left us alone — not helping us, but not working against us. Here they have stopped supporting Israel on behalf of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran,” she told The Washington Times, adding that all three groups are attacking Israel at once and seeking its destruction.
Ms. Glick said Israel fears the pause in weapons supplies will be the first step in a slow erosion of U.S. support. She expects the U.S. to use its might on the U.N. Security Council to force a cease-fire vote or pursue sanctions against Israel if it moves into Rafah.
She said the U.S. has the power to undermine Israeli military operations because some weapons systems operate in conjunction with the two countries.
“This move also all but guarantees the war will spread and escalate on multiple fronts. The sight of American betrayal of Israel in the midst of a war for Israel’s survival all but begs Hezbollah and Iran and the Houthis to expand their aggression as much as they can,” Ms. Glick said.
Since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, the Biden administration has sold at least $254 million in weapons to the Jewish state, including artillery shells and tank ammunition cartridges, the White House said. The administration bypassed congressional approval for the sales by invoking emergency authority.
Those sales amount to only a small portion of the weapons sent to Israel. More than 100 other transactions fall under the dollar amount required for notification, according to a March report in The Washington Post.
Mr. Kirby said Thursday that the 3,500 bombs Mr. Biden stopped were approved by Congress several years ago but not fulfilled.
Since Israel’s formation in 1946, The U.S. has sent roughly $287 billion in aid, of which $206 billion was military assistance, according to ForeignAssistance.gov, a federal government website that tracks such data.
Republicans say withholding more aid for Israel would violate a 1974 law that requires a president to spend money appropriated by Congress. It also requires presidents to obtain congressional approval to rescind specific government spending.
“I think he’s setting a bad precedent, and I think he’s courting serious constitutional trouble here,” Sen. Josh Hawley, Missouri Republican, told reporters.
The White House did not respond to multiple requests for comment about whether Mr. Biden has the legal authority to halt the shipments or whether it had any reaction to the Republicans’ impeachment demands.
• Mike Glenn contributed to this article, which is based in part on wire service reports.
• Alex Miller can be reached at amiller@washingtontimes.com.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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