Washington — The Trump administration has formally moved to sell nearly $6 billion in US weapons to Israel, a package centered on new AH-64 Apache attack helicopters and thousands of armored troop carriers, placing Washington’s political judgment under a hard light as Gaza’s devastation and displacement grind into another year. The plan, disclosed to Congress, is described by officials as a routine reinforcement of a close ally, but it lands at a moment when the very premise of unconditional backing faces an unusual level of scrutiny among US lawmakers and allied capitals. Nearly $6 billion in weapons to Israel is not a small signal. It is the message.
The composition of the deal makes that message plain. People familiar with the request told Reuters that the administration’s notification included a $3.8 billion tranche for 30 AH-64 Apaches and roughly $1.9 billion for more than three thousand infantry assault vehicles, plus associated support items working through the pipeline. In Reuters’ accounting, that ground component totals 3,250 infantry assault vehicles, a figure that underscores a bet on sustained urban maneuver rather than a quick transition to policing and reconstruction. The Wall Street Journal’s reporting framed the helicopter buy as large enough to nearly double Israel’s fleet, amplifying the visibility of any battlefield use.
On the ground in Gaza, famine warnings, mass displacement, and the collapse of municipal services have hardened a grim baseline. Independent monitors and aid officials describe a landscape where food, water, and medicine are transactional and often lethal to pursue, a pattern Eastern Herald has followed from the start. Our investigations have documented a deliberate starvation policy in Gaza that is no longer a rhetorical charge but a daily administrative fact.
Legal exposure is no longer an academic aside. Proceedings and filings before international tribunals have widened their aperture from cease-fire mechanics to the conduct of the war and the obstruction of relief, with an intensifying focus on the responsibilities of states arming an active belligerent. The docket is crowded: questions of proportionality, starvation, and the duties of an occupying force are now core to the diplomatic script. Eastern Herald has chronicled how ICJ hearings on Israel and U.S. blocking Gaza aid have complicated the politics of transfers in Washington.
Statutorily, the Arms Export Control Act governs these decisions. For Israel and certain treaty partners, Congress has 15 calendar days to register formal disapproval of a notified sale. The rule is straightforward, but the politics are not. The 15-day congressional review period under the Arms Export Control Act is a clock that rarely runs out on a disapproval vote, yet it has become an instrument of messaging and leverage, a public ledger of where lawmakers stand as casualty reports and satellite images mount.
There is also a faster lane, written into the same law. Presidents can cite an urgent national security need and waive the standard review timeline. That authority, used sparingly, carries a heavy political charge when applied to an active war zone, and it figured prominently earlier this year when the secretary of state invoked it to rush munitions. The emergency authority to waive review under Section 36(b) remains on the books, a reminder that oversight can be bounded by executive will when the White House is determined.
The bureaucracy hums underneath. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency publishes formal notifications and manages the pipeline with a cadence that usually draws little attention beyond defense circles. Earlier this year, for instance, the agency flagged a series of munitions and support packages for Israel, including large lots of guidance kits and air-to-ground ordnance. These posts are dry, but they are the scaffolding of policy. See DSCA’s recent notices on munitions and munitions support and munitions guidance kits that set the procedural stage for this latest push.
Inside the machinery, the Security Assistance Management Manual has evolved to standardize how and when the executive branch alerts Congress, including thresholds, templates, and review procedures. Chapter 5 reads like a wiring diagram for this exact moment, laying out numbered certifications under different subsections of the AECA. For readers tracking the fine print, DSCA’s Security Assistance Management Manual, Chapter 5 and the 2024 guidance memo on 36(b) congressional notifications explain why some sales surface publicly while others percolate through quiet pre-notification.
The timing is its own statement. The new package surfaced just as delegates converged on New York for the United Nations General Assembly, with Gaza eclipsing every other file in hallway diplomacy. The administration’s allies argue that steady transfers shore up deterrence against Hezbollah and Iran and in turn shorten the war by clarifying Israel’s advantages. Critics hear something else: a refusal to acknowledge that unconditional weapons flows are part of the reason the war has sprawled across calendars. Associated Press wrap situates the notification in that theater of optics, with Washington signaling continued support despite Gaza backlash.
The visibility of Apaches ensures that the debate will never stay technical. These are platforms designed to find, fix, and finish under fire. Their loiter time and sensor suites are built for the sort of dispersed, urbanized threats that have defined Gaza’s battlefields. Delivery timelines, however, are long. Reporting indicates that the new aircraft and vehicles would arrive in two to three years or more, lengthening the lag between a political signal and the moment hardware changes battlefield math. As multiple outlets have noted, that delay is structural. Defense industry argues that it is also prudent, allowing training, doctrine, and the integration of new sensors to catch up.
Fleet math matters. If executed as outlined, the helicopter buy would expand Israel’s Apache force significantly, changing sortie generation capacity and the ability to provide close air support on short notice. Jerusalem-based outlets, citing wire partners, describe the helicopter tranche as large enough to nearly double the fleet, a framing that captures why hardware is also narrative. The Israel request would nearly double its Apache fleet is precisely the kind of phrase that will be litigated every time a strike goes wrong.
The ground component is less glamorous but more determinative. Thousands of armored carriers would change how infantry moves in dense neighborhoods and along narrow corridors littered with booby traps. Used correctly, they lower casualties; used without discipline, they can magnify harm by giving false confidence and encouraging pushes into areas where intelligence is thin. In Gaza City, where block by block fighting has pulsed for months, United Nations officials have warned that the pattern of strikes and raids now resembles terrorizing tactics against civilians. Our reporting from the northern districts documented that cycle as UN warns of ‘terrorizing tactics’ in Gaza City, a phrase chosen carefully by diplomats who rarely speak that plainly.
Children are dying in the margins where military communiqués reduce neighborhoods to grids and alleged targets to nodes. Recent air and artillery attacks in central Gaza have killed entire families, among them school-age children whose names rarely appear in policy memos. In Az-Zawayda, the civilian toll again included minors, a fact our correspondents documented the morning after the strike. Read the dispatch, children among the dead in Az-Zawayda strike, for the names behind the euphemisms.
The case for restraint is no longer limited to the political left. A notable share of Democratic senators recently supported measures to restrict offensive transfers while the war remains an urban demolition, and a separate Senate push has pressed the administration to back a time-bound pathway to Palestinian statehood. Those parliamentary moves do not prohibit sales directly, but they tell the story of a coalition fraying under the weight of images that no longer fit the old talking points.
Internationally, the tone is harder still. Voting majorities in the General Assembly have endorsed benchmarks and timelines that, in practical terms, isolate Washington and Tel Aviv. Eastern Herald has covered how UN backs a time-bound two-state plan even as the war apparatus expands. The same week, speeches from Arab and European leaders traded diplomatic niceties for indictment. When a monarch whose country has often brokered quietly tells the room that Israel is “tearing up the foundations of peace,” it is not business as usual. See our report, King Abdullah warns Israel is tearing up foundations of peace.
At home, the administration’s message is that leverage comes from engagement, not abstinence. Equip Israel, the argument goes, and Washington gains influence over targeting practices, deconfliction, and post-strike assessments. Withhold kit, and the war devolves to cruder munitions and improvisation. Human rights advocates counter that this theory of influence has failed every real-world test in Gaza and that conditioning must be attached to the equipment itself, not to after-the-fact briefings. That debate is not abstract. We have reported on the US-backed aid experiment that killed civilians, a case study in how technocratic assurances evaporate under battlefield pressure.
There is also the law. Occupation and siege doctrines have collided with international rulings, and the argument that urban density absolves commanders of duty has worn thin with judges and investigators. The current government’s own planning memos for Gaza governance suggest a military-first approach that international lawyers say would defy court orders. Our analysis, Gaza occupation plan defies ICJ ruling, explains why that posture is not only a diplomatic liability but a legal cliff.
Diplomatic costs are widening beyond speeches. In Latin America, major economies have moved from statements to penalties, including financial and trade measures, explicitly linked to Gaza conduct. Brazil’s move is instructive because it pairs sanctions with formal steps at courts in The Hague. See our coverage, Brazil imposes sanctions and joins the ICJ case, for the template other governments are studying.
At the United Nations, the optics have turned into arithmetic. Vote tallies, not just rhetoric, show the United States and Israel increasingly alone. A wave of recognitions, resolutions, and procedural maneuvers has added up to something real. Our report, UNGA 80 isolation of US and Israel, cataloged that swing. Inside the UN building, the administration’s representatives say privately that they can weather the votes as long as Washington holds the hard power cards. Whether that calculus holds outside Midtown is less clear.
The presidency has also used New York’s stage to split the difference rhetorically, calling for an immediate end to major combat while rejecting statehood benchmarks and legal pathways the rest of the chamber sees as essential. It is a posture designed for domestic television and donor rooms, not for diplomats tasked with stitching back a shredded humanitarian map. The contradiction was on open display this week when the president told delegates the war must end “immediately” but paired that appeal with conditions that foreclose the only political end state widely seen as viable. Read our summary, Trump says Gaza war must end ‘immediately’ while rejecting statehood.
For defense planners, the counterargument is not moral but mechanical. They insist that transfers like these are how the United States keeps a hand on the tiller, embedding training and post-strike reviews that reduce harm relative to what would otherwise occur. The record is, at best, mixed. The idea that more surveillance, more fusing options, and more battle damage assessments will produce fewer civilian deaths has not survived two years of Gaza’s reality. In the words of one European diplomat, the equipment has outpaced the ethics.
Congress retains tools besides the nuclear option of a joint disapproval. Committees can slow paperwork, place holds, demand written assurances, and attach condition language to future appropriations. Process reformers point back to the manual, arguing that pre-notification and template discipline prevent worst-case surprises. The manuals are not a solution to a moral problem, but they are a reminder that policy is made by forms as well as by speeches. For those tracking that granular level, DSCA’s chapter on 36(b) and related policy memoranda on congressional notifications sketch the routes that every sale must travel.
This is not the first large package this year. Earlier in 2025, Washington notified Congress of an $8 billion munitions-heavy set of transfers, one that stirred similar arguments about proportionality and prudence. The Biden-era $8 billion Israel package remains an uncomfortable comparator for Democrats who now campaign as skeptics of offensive aid. In practice, both administrations have pursued continuity with variations in tone.
The administration’s allies say the $6 billion package answers to regional deterrence, not just Gaza. They point to rocket inventories north of the border and to Iran’s maturing drone ecosystem, arguing that reinforcing Israel’s close-air support and protected mobility reduces the risk of a wider war. Skeptics reply that deterrence theory has repeatedly failed in the face of political decisions in Jerusalem and a coalition that treats pressure as proof of righteousness. What deters escalation, they say, is accountability and the credible threat of withholding support when law is breached.
The numbers are confusing by design. AP’s reporting outlines a $3.8 billion helicopter tranche, $1.9 billion for vehicles, and delivery timelines that stretch beyond two years. Reuters adds a separate layer of support parts for armored personnel carriers and power components moving through the process. If that complexity makes the package look like a jigsaw puzzle, that is because the foreign military sales regime is built that way. It distributes controversy across multiple notices and timelines so that no single vote becomes a referendum on the entire policy. The bureaucratic drumbeat is real; DSCA’s “major arms sales” pages capture a series of Israel notifications in 2025 that rarely would have merited a headline in quieter years.
A final note about the lived consequences. In Gaza’s shelters and makeshift clinics, the debate in Washington is a distant echo. What is not distant is the next explosion, the next building collapse, the next convoy that never reaches its destination. The job of journalism is to make sure those facts remain present when votes are counted. That is why Eastern Herald continues to anchor coverage in the civilian ledger. The starvation file, the aid-line file, the UN warnings file, and the children killed file are not separate stories. They are the same story told at different hours.
The administration insists that continued transfers are the responsible path, the way to keep Israel inside a framework where American officers and lawyers can nudge practice toward the law. The results so far do not support that optimism. Until the policy changes at its root, each new notification will read the same way in Gaza’s alleys: more noise, more dust, more names added to a ledger that should shame the capitals who still speak of humane war. And each new notification will read the same way in Washington’s hearing rooms: another test of how much Congress is prepared to overlook to keep an alliance intact.
