Trump lifts Biden's hold, approves 2,000-pound bomb shipment to Israel

In a post on his Truth Social network Saturday, Trump said, “A lot of things that were ordered and paid for by Israel, but have not been sent by Biden, are now on their way!” A Trump administration official confirmed that he was referring to the heavy bombs. The official was not authorized to give that detail publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Then-President Joe Biden halted the delivery of the large bombs in May as part of an effort to keep Israel from launching an all-out assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah. A month later, Israel did take control of the city, but after the vast majority of the 1 million civilians that had been living or sheltering in Rafah had fled.

“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden told CNN in May when he held up the weapons. “I made it clear that 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, that deal with that problem.”