Rubio to Expedite $4 Billion Military Assistance to Israel

The decision comes as a six-week cease-fire between Israel and Hamas has ended.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio (L) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu make a joint statement to the media at the prime minister's office in Jerusalem on Feb. 16, 2025. Ohad Zwigenberg/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is taking action to ensure the speedy delivery of Israel’s military aid, committing to fulfill the United States’ security arrangements with the nation.

“I have signed a declaration to use emergency authorities to expedite the delivery of approximately $4 billion in military assistance to Israel,” Rubio said in a March 1 statement. A partial arms embargo imposed by the Biden administration had “wrongly withheld a number of weapons and ammunition from Israel.” This situation has now been reversed under the Trump administration, according to the statement.

In its second term, the Trump administration has approved almost $12 billion worth of foreign military sales to Israel, Rubio said.

“This important decision coincides with President [Donald] Trump’s repeal of a Biden-era memorandum which had imposed baseless and politicized conditions on military assistance to Israel at a time when our close ally was fighting a war of survival on multiple fronts against Iran and terror proxies.”

This could be a reference to the Biden administration restricting the delivery of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel citing concerns about the weapons potentially targeting populated regions of Gaza. In January, Trump lifted the hold on deliveries, with the weapons arriving in Israel last month.

The government will use “all available tools” to fulfill America’s security commitments to Israel, including supporting it to counter security threats, the secretary of state said.

The U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) announced Friday that it made a determination to approve potential foreign military sales of nearly $3 billion worth of weapons to Israel in multiple deals.

The first is a $2.04 billion deal for 35,529 MK 84 or BLU-117 general purpose bomb bodies and 4,000 I-2000 Penetrator warheads. Deliveries are set to begin next year.

The secretary of state “has determined and provided detailed justification that an emergency exists that requires the immediate sale to the Government of Israel of the above defense articles and defense services in the national security interests of the United States,” DSCA said.

Out of the roughly $3 billion, more than $675 million was for munitions, munitions support, and guidance kits, with deliveries set to start in 2028. The final deal is worth $295 million, with the United States supplying D9R and D9T Caterpillar bulldozers to Israel.

Ending the Conflict

The $4 billion in military aid comes as a six-week-long cease-fire between Israel and the Hamas terrorist group ended this weekend.

A new cease-fire proposal was put forward by U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, seeking a temporary truce between the two sides during the Islamic Ramadan and Jewish Passover period. Ramadan is expected to end on March 30, and Passover on April 20.

While Israel agreed to the proposal, Hamas refused to “accept the Witkoff framework for the continuation of the talks,” said a March 2 post by the Israeli prime minister’s office on social media platform X. As a result, “PM Netanyahu decided: as of this morning, entry of all goods & supplies to the Gaza Strip be halted.”

President Donald Trump on Feb. 4 proposed that the Gazans relocate out of the Gaza Strip completely and that the United States clean up and redevelop the region, in order to end deadly conflicts in the region for good.

After Trump’s proposal, experts said the idea of ending the Israeli–Palestinian conflict through a two-state solution seems to be dimming.

Eli Sperling, an Israel Institute Teaching Fellow at the University of Georgia, previously told The Epoch Times that this idea was likely dead.

“Many foreign policy thinkers have discussed Gaza as a Hong Kong-style city-state, maybe incorporated into a Palestinian state later,” he said. “It is harder to maintain the pretext that there can ever be a two-state solution.”

A majority of Palestinians and Israelis also do not want it, Sperling said.

Last month, Trump signed an executive order to withdraw the United States from the U.N. Human Rights Council.

The White House said the council was being used as “a protective body for countries committing horrific human rights violations” and accused the group of discriminating against Israel.

The order also ended U.S. funding for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, stating the agency has “consistently shown itself to be antisemitic and anti-Israel.”

Dan M. Berger contributed to the report.