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Washington, DC – The United States Senate has rejected a bill that aimed to block a US weapons sale to Israel amid the country’s war on Gaza, an outcome that rights advocates say does not take away from a growing push to condition aid to Washington’s top ally.
A resolution to halt the sale of tank rounds failed to advance in a 79 to 18 vote on Wednesday with prominent progressives and mainstream Democratic senators backing the effort.
Two more resolutions to halt the sale of other weapons are still to be voted on, but the results are expected to be similar.
The proposal was part of a series of measures known as Joint Resolutions of Disapproval (JRDs) that Senator Bernie Sanders introduced in September to reject the sale of offensive weapons to Israel as part of a $20bn deal approved by the administration of President Joe Biden.
It was the first time ever that a weapon sale to Israel was subjected to such a vote.
While support for the push may appear minimal, it represents a crack in the bipartisan consensus over unconditional US aid to Israel.
Beth Miller, political director at the US-based advocacy group Jewish Voice for Peace, said the vote is an “inflexion point” in the decades-long effort to restrict Washington’s military assistance to Israel.
“This is too little too late; this genocide has been going on for 13 months, but that does not change the fact that this is a critically important step,” Miller told Al Jazeera.
Mainstream support
In addition to Sanders, Senators Peter Welch, Jeff Merkley, Chris Van Hollen, Tim Kaine and Brian Schatz backed the resolution to block offensive munitions to Israel.
While Sanders is a progressive independent who caucuses with Democrats, some of the lawmakers who backed the effort come from the mainstream wing of the party.
Kaine was the Democratic Party’s vice presidential nominee in the 2016 elections that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lost to incoming Republican President Donald Trump.
In a statement announcing his vote earlier on Wednesday, Kaine called for work towards “de-escalation and a sustainable peace” in the region.
“Continued offensive weapons transfers will worsen the current crisis and add more fuel to the fire of regional instability,” the senator said.
“Therefore, while I voted for the $14 billion defense aid package for Israel in April and continue to support the transfer of defensive weapons, I will vote to oppose the transfers of mortars, tank rounds, and Joint Direct Attack Munitions [JDAMs] to Israel.”
Ongoing US backing of Israel has been vital for funding the war on Gaza and Lebanon.
A recent Brown University study found that the Biden administration spent $17.9bn on security assistance to Israel over the past year, despite warnings of United Nations experts that the US ally is committing genocide in Gaza.
That assistance has persisted despite growing Israeli atrocities, including widespread destruction in Lebanon, sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners and the suffocating siege in Gaza that has been starving the territory.
White House intervention
While Republicans were united in opposition to the measures, HuffPost reported that the Biden administration lobbied Democratic senators to vote against them.
Shelley Greenspan, the White House Liaison to the American Jewish community, appeared to confirm that report.
Greenspan, a former employee of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), shared – with an approving emoji – a social media post saying that a lame duck Biden remains staunchly supportive of Israel, including by lobbying against Sanders’s resolutions.
The White House did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
— Shelley Greenspan (@ShelleyGspan) November 20, 2024
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) denounced the White House’s lobbying efforts.
“We strongly condemn the White House’s dishonest campaign to pressure Senate Democrats into avoiding even a symbolic vote against the delivery of more American taxpayer-funded weapons to the out-of-control Netanyahu government,” the group said in a statement.
“The Biden administration’s foreign policy in the Middle East has been a disastrous failure.”
CAIR is one of dozens of advocacy and rights groups that backed the resolution.
In a speech on the Senate floor before the vote, Sanders cited that support ahead of the vote.
He said the resolutions are “simple, straightforward and not complicated”. He argued that the measures aim to apply US laws that prohibit military assistance to countries that block humanitarian aid and commit abuses.
“A lot of folks come to the floor to talk about human rights and what’s going on around the world, but what I want to say to all those folks: Nobody is going to take anything you say with a grain of seriousness,” Sanders said.
“You cannot condemn human rights [violations] around the world and then turn a blind eye to what the United States government is now funding in Israel. People will laugh in your face. They will say to you, ‘You’re concerned about China; you’re concerned about Russia; you’re concerned about Iran. Well, why are you funding the starvation of children in Gaza right now?”
‘Moral obligation’
Senator Jacky Rosen, a staunchly pro-Israel Democrat, spoke out against the resolutions, arguing that restrictions on aid to Israel would empower Iran and its allies in the region.
“Israel has an absolute right to defend itself, and the aid provided by America is critical,” Rosen said.
If the resolution had passed, it would have needed to be approved in the House of Representatives as well before reaching the president’s desk, and Biden would have likely blocked them.
A presidential veto can be overturned with a two-thirds majority in the House and the Senate.
Several Democrats in the House of Representatives had voiced support for the JRDs.
Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and eight other lawmakers said in a joint statement: “President-elect Trump’s return to the White House will only embolden Netanyahu and his far-right ministers. A vote for the joint resolutions of disapproval is a vote to politically restrain the Netanyahu government from any forthcoming efforts to formally annex the West Bank and settle parts of Gaza.”
Miller, of Jewish Voice for Peace, said lawmakers had ethical, legal and political obligations to vote in favour of the resolution.
“There is a moral obligation for them to stop arming a genocide. There is a legal obligation for them to follow US law and stop sending weapons to a government that is using our equipment in violation of our own law. And there is a political obligation for them to do what their constituents are telling them to do,” she said.
