The $2.8 billion package includes 40,000 of the bombs, made up of 20,000 Mk84s and 20,000 BLU-117s, according to two U.S. officials and a person familiar with the plan who spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity to discuss the package, which is not yet final.<\/p>\n
Congress has been informally notified about the pending deal, most of which is to be paid for with foreign military financing \u2014 in which U.S. taxpayer dollars are given to Israel to turn around and buy the weapons from the United States.<\/p>\n
The proposed sale is just the latest in a series of Trump administration steps to improve Israeli\u2019s military capacity. The conflict in Gaza has left tens of thousands of Palestinians dead and has decimated the enclave. The U.S. brokered a fragile ceasefire, but violence has continued.<\/p>\n
The package, which was reported earlier by The Washington Post, comes as Israel has faced increasing international isolation over its war in Gaza in response to the\u00a0deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attacks<\/a> by Hamas.<\/p>\n The sale signals that\u00a0some strains in the relationship<\/a>\u00a0between President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, especially since the two countries\u00a0launched the war against Iran<\/a>\u00a0in February, are not impeding the closeness of the U.S.-Israeli alliance. Trump has had a hot-and-cold history with Netanyahu over the years and expressed some frustration with Netanyahu tied to the Iran conflict before their\u00a0latest meeting in July<\/a>\u00a0at the White House.<\/p>\n In 2024, the Biden administration held off on one shipment of the bombs, but Trump lifted that hold when he took office again.<\/p>\n Last year, the Trump administration\u00a0bypassed a normal congressional review process<\/a>\u00a0and approved a nearly $3 billion sale to Israel that included more than 35,500 of the bombs. The administration then approved a new series of arms sales to Israel\u00a0totaling $6.67 billion<\/a>\u00a0in January.<\/p>\n The\u00a02,000-pound bombs have multiple variants<\/a>, with some designed to penetrate deep, underground targets while others detonate above ground and cause widespread damage.<\/p>\n Though the Israeli military has offered few details about what bombs and artillery it has used in Gaza, experts analyzing strike footage and blast fragments found on-site believe the U.S.-made bombs have been used there, targeting a tunnel network used by Hamas but also killing of people in densely populated areas.<\/p>\n While the heaviest fighting in Gaza has subsided since the fragile ceasefire took hold in October, Israel has continued to carry out strikes in the territory, including some overnight and into Tuesday that killed several people. That is even after Jared Kushner, Trump\u2019s son-in-law and a key Mideast negotiator,\u00a0met with Netanyahu last month<\/a>\u00a0in an effort to push the ceasefire deal forward and\u00a0asked Israel to reduce its attacks<\/a>.<\/p>\n Militants have carried out shooting attacks on Israeli troops, and Israel says its strikes are in response to those and other ceasefire violations.<\/p>\n The Hamas-led attack on southern Israel in 2023 killed around 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage. Israel\u2019s offensive in Gaza to retaliate has killed more than 73,264 Palestinians, including those killed since the ceasefire, Gaza\u2019s Health Ministry said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By MICHELLE L. PRICE and MATTHEW LEE WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The Trump administration is planning to deliver powerful…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[183113,340,842,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-465021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-arms-sales","tag-israel","tag-israel-hamas-war","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/APTOPIX_Israel_Palestinians_Gaza_66239_e38890.jpg\")
An explosion erupts following an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City, Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2026. (AP Photo\/Jehad Alshrafi)<\/p>\n