WASHINGTON — Sen. Bernie Sanders is preparing several resolutions that would stop more than $20 billion in U.S. arms sales to Israel, a longshot effort but the most substantive pushback yet from Congress over the devastation in Gaza ahead of the first year anniversary of the Israel-Hamas war.
In a letter to Senate colleagues on Wednesday, Sanders said the U.S. cannot be ''complicit in this humanitarian disaster.'' The action would force an eventual vote to block the arms sales to Israel, though majority passage is highly unlikely.
''Much of this carnage in Gaza has been carried out with U.S.-provided military equipment," Sanders, I-Vt., wrote.
As the war grinds toward a second year, and with the outcome of President Joe Biden's efforts to broker a cease-fire deal and hostage release uncertain, the resolutions from Sanders would seek to reign in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's assault on Gaza. The war has killed some 41,000 people in Gaza after the surprise Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack that killed about 1,200 people in Israel, and abducted 250 others, with militants still holding around 100 hostages.
While it's doubtful the politically split Senate would pass the measures, the move is designed to send a message to the Netanyahu regime that its war effort is eroding the U.S.'s longtime bipartisan support for Israel. Sanders said he is working with other colleagues on the measures.
Key Senate Democrats have been pushing the Biden administration to end the Israel-Hamas war and lessen the humanitarian crisis, particularly in Gaza, where people's homes, hospitals, schools and entire Palestinian families are being wiped out.
Sanders' resolutions would halt sales of missile systems, tank rounds and other weaponry, some that has been singled out for causing some of the most severe destruction in Gaza, and new fighter jets. Congress had temporarily stalled some arms sales to Israel earlier this year, as lawmakers have tried to warn against the rising death toll.
Netanyahu was invited earlier this year to speak before the U.S. Congress, and he delivered a combative address that put the growing divide in the U.S. over his war effort on public display.
