(Washington, D.C., September 18, 2026) — Members of Congress should introduce and pass joint resolutions of disapproval under the Arms Export Control Act to block the Trump administration’s proposed $2.8 billion transfer of 40,000 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) said today in a letter to every member of the Senate and House of Representatives.
The letter lays out how the transfer would violate U.S. and international law, and how it could expose members of Congress to individual criminal liability for aiding and abetting war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
“Forty thousand of the bombs that flattened Gaza is not a defense package, it is a down payment on the next round of atrocities,” said Omar Shakir, executive director of DAWN. “Every member of Congress now has the law and the evidence in front of them. A vote to let this sale proceed is a decision to help Israel commit more war crimes.”
This week, the Trump administration notified congressional committees of the pending sale, which includes 40,000 general-purpose 2,000-pound bombs (20,000 MK84s and 20,000 BLU-117s, a variant of the MK84), as well as 20,000 I-2000 penetrator warheads, according to The Washington Post. Most of the cost would reportedly be covered through foreign military financing (FMF), meaning U.S. taxpayer dollars are given to Israel to buy the weapons from U.S. manufacturers.
The MK84 is among the most destructive conventional munitions. A 2,000-pound bomb has a lethal fragmentation radius of up to 365 meters, an area equivalent to 58 soccer fields. Based on a CNN analysis of satellite imagery that identified more than 500 craters consistent with 2,000-pound bombs dropped the first month of the war in Gaza alone, a former U.N. war crimes investigator said such density of bombardment had not been seen since Vietnam. Looking at the first six weeks of the war, a New York Times investigation identified at least 208 such craters in southern Gaza, where Israel had ordered civilians to flee. Munitions experts told both outlets that U.S. forces almost never drop bombs of this size in populated areas. Israel has used them hundreds of times in Gaza and Lebanon. The Biden administration paused a shipment of these bombs in May 2024 precisely because of the risk of mass casualties in Rafah; President Trump released it within days of taking office.
Israel’s assault has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including more than 21,000 children, and the killing has not stopped. UNICEF said last month that at least 300 children had reportedly been killed since the October 2025 ceasefire, an average of one child every day.
The letter details the U.S. statutes the sale would breach: Section 4 of the Arms Export Control Act permits transfers only for legitimate self-defense and internal security; Section 502B of the Foreign Assistance Act bars security assistance to any government engaged in a consistent pattern of gross violations of human rights; Section 620I prohibits assistance to any country that restricts U.S. humanitarian aid; and Section 620M, the Leahy Law, forbids assistance, including FMF, to any unit that is credibly implicated in gross violations of human rights. Israel fails every one of these tests: dropping 2,000-pound bombs on designated safe zones, hospitals and refugee camps is not self-defense under any reading of the statute; the ICC warrants, the ICJ’s genocide orders and two years of U.N. and human rights documentation establish a consistent pattern of gross violations; and Israel has obstructed the delivery of U.S.-funded humanitarian aid throughout the war and continues to do so under the ceasefire. Despite extensive documentation by human rights organizations, UN bodies and even the State Department itself showing that Israeli units have committed such violations, the department, while disqualifying scores of units across the globe, has never disqualified an Israeli unit.
Palestinian families supported by DAWN sued the State Department in December 2024 under the Administrative Procedure Act over its clear unwillingness to apply the law to Israel. A separate DAWN lawsuit seeks the records for the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum, the exceptional vetting process the State Department built exclusively for Israel to avoid the law. Both cases are ongoing in D.C. District Court.
“The executive branch’s refusal to apply the Leahy Law to a single Israeli unit is not an oversight—it is state policy and this sale would send billions more U.S. taxpayer dollars to forces that have caused mass civilian casualties using these same weapons,” said Charles Blaha, senior advisor at DAWN and former director of the State Department’s Office of Security and Human Rights. “Congress wrote these statutes with no exception for allies and it should block this sale so long as the State Department fails to apply the Leahy Law with regard to Israel.”
On Wednesday, Rep. Gregory Meeks, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, placed a hold on the sale, saying the administration had not provided sufficient assurances that the bombs would be used lawfully in Gaza and Lebanon. A hold, however, is an informal courtesy, one that the administration has repeatedly ignored and overridden in order to send billions of dollars of munitions to Israel in the past two years. In February 2025, after the State Department formally notified Congress of more than $7 billion in munitions for Israel despite a Meeks hold, Secretary of State Marco Rubio invoked emergency authority to bypass congressional review altogether and push through more than 35,500 of the same 2,000-pound bombs. He invoked that authority again for further sales to Israel in March and May 2026.
Congress, however, has the tools to stop this arms transfer. On Thursday, days after news of the Israel transfer broke, Senators Ed Markey, Jeff Merkley and Bernie Sanders introduced a joint resolution of disapproval against the planned sale of $5 billion worth of bombs to Saudi Arabia, including thousands of the same 2,000-pound bombs. The Israel package contains eight times as many 2,000-pound bombs and demands the same response.
Under Section 36(b) of the Arms Export Control Act, once formal notification of a major arms sale is provided, any senator can force a floor vote under expedited procedures; in the House, a resolution is privileged only if the Foreign Affairs Committee reports it, so the committee and House leadership must act. To actually stop an arms sale, a JRD would need to pass with a two-thirds majority to ensure it can survive a presidential veto.
But public opinion and the votes are shifting. A New York Times/Siena poll in May 2026 found that 57 percent of registered voters, and nearly three-quarters of Democratic voters, oppose sending additional economic and military aid to Israel. In April 2026, 40 of the 47 members of the Senate Democratic caucus voted to block a sale of bulldozers to Israel and 36 voted to block a shipment of 12,000 1,000-pound bombs, up from 15 votes on a comparable resolution a year earlier.
“The administration is betting that Congress will do what it always does: complain, then look away,” said Raed Jarrar, advocacy director at DAWN. “Congress should show the administration that it’s no longer the rubber stamp it long has been on arms to Israel and block this sale.”
In its letter to lawmakers, DAWN calls for introducing joint resolutions of disapproval against the sale to Israel the day the administration formally notifies it, just as senators did with the Saudi bomb sale. The letter further urges members to call on the leadership of both chambers to bring the resolutions to the floor for a recorded vote, to call on the State Department to withdraw the proposed transfer and halt weapons transfers to Israel pending compliance with Section 502B and the Leahy Law, and to call on the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations Committees to hold public hearings on the administration’s repeated circumvention of congressional review.
The massive munitions transfer to Israel is not only illegal under U.S. law; the letter sets out why facilitating the transfer might itself be a crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The ICC has issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for the war crimes of starvation and intentionally directing attacks against civilians and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution and other inhumane acts, at least some of which are believed to have been committed with the use of U.S.-supplied MK84 bombs. Article 25(3)(c) of the Rome Statute makes it a crime to aid, abet or otherwise assist in the commission of such crimes, “including providing the means for its commission,” and Article 25(3)(d) criminalizes any intentional contribution made with the knowledge of a group’s intention to commit them.
In January 2025, DAWN submitted a 172-page communication to the ICC prosecutor urging him to investigate and prosecute former President Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for aiding and abetting those same crimes. This included documentation showing that their conduct met both the material and mental elements of those offenses by approving at least $17.9 billion in weapons transfers while fully aware of how Israel was using them.