News - Middle East: The outgoing US president, Joe Biden, is expected to deliver a farewell address from the Oval Office on Wednesday – his fifth and last address – as he prepares to pass the baton to President-elect Donald Trump. 

Biden is likely to speak about his tumultuous tenure between 2021 and 2025 and reflect on his legacy.

The defining feature of Biden's legacy as the 46th American president has been his ironclad support for the Israeli regime amid the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, which was evident from billions of dollars worth of arms shipments to Tel Aviv despite massive outcry inside the US and across the world.

This support has only strengthened in the past 15 months despite rising Palestinian civilian casualties and widespread devastation resulting from the Israeli regime’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Since Israel launched its all-out war on Gaza 464 days ago on October 7, 2023, at least 46,500 Palestinians have been killed, with a significant number being women and children. At least 109,500 others have been wounded and many more remain trapped under the debris.

New research published by the Lancet medical journal - conducted by academics at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Yale University and other institutions - estimates that the death toll in Gaza in the first nine months of the war was about 40 percent higher than numbers recorded.

The ongoing genocidal war has also destroyed hospitals, schools and refugee camps in Gaza, while the blockade of food and other essential supplies has further exacerbated the situation for people.

Humanitarian organizations have repeatedly voiced concerns over the dire situation, as famine-related deaths rise and essential services, such as healthcare and education, have come to a grinding halt.

Israel has been ordered by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to take steps to halt its genocidal actions and the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former military affairs minister Yoav Gallant over war crimes in Gaza.

What has emboldened the apartheid regime and provided it impunity is the Biden administration's unwavering support through public statements and various political and diplomatic measures, effectively disregarding the Zionist entity’s ethnic cleansing and genocidal war crimes in Gaza.

US military aid to Israel

Israel figures on the list of “major non-NATO allies” of the United States and has for years had privileged access to the most advanced US military platforms and technologies.

Since World War II, Israel has been the largest recipient of US foreign aid, including military assistance, and is also a leading buyer of US weapons systems via traditional arms sales.

According to the USAFacts, a non-profit initiative providing access to US government data, the successive regimes in Tel Aviv have received about $317 billion (adjusted for inflation) in total economic and military assistance from the US from 1951 to 2022.

The United States has provisionally agreed via a 10-year memorandum of understanding (MOU) to provide the Israeli regime with $3.8 billion per year through 2028.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the US accounted for 69 percent of Israel’s imports of major conventional arms between 2019 and 2023.

However, US aid and arms sales to Israel have come under heightened international scrutiny since the apartheid regime began its genocidal actions in Gaza 15 months ago, violating all international laws.

The Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs, affiliated with Brown University, in a recent report, revealed that in just one year (October 7, 2023-September 30, 2024), the Biden administration spent at least $22.76 billion on military aid to the Israeli regime and related US operations in the region.

The $22.76 billion figure comes from adding $17.9 billion in US military assistance to Israel ($14.1 billion in emergency military aid approved in April plus the usual annual military aid of $3.8 billion) and $4.86 billion in US military operations in the region, including against Yemeni resistance.

In March, The Wall Street Journal reported that there “are currently 600 active cases of potential military transfer or sales worth more than $23 billion between the US and Israel.”

Some of the cases cited in the report are due to deals made in past years, and without additional details, it is impossible to know how many of them will result in arms deliveries that might come soon enough to be used by the Israeli military in its Gaza war.

This means that the figure of $17.9 billion in US military assistance to the Israeli regime is a fraction of the full value of US support for this war, which will only be determined over time.

This lack of transparency was also revealed in a March article in The Washington Post, which noted that the Biden administration had made at least 100 arms deals with Israel since October 2023 that fell below the value that would have triggered the requirement to notify Congress of the details.

The deals included $14 million for major equipment and $50 million for other articles and services.

Moreover, in August the Biden administration approved another $20 billion in weapons transfers to Tel Aviv. The arms sale included Boeing-made F-15 fighter jets, Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles, or AMRAAMs, 120mm tank ammunition and high explosive mortars and tactical vehicles.

At the time the Israeli military had killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, leveled entire neighborhoods and blocked shipments of humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip.

In November, the Biden administration provisionally approved a $680m arms package to the Israeli regime, even as the regime was wreaking havoc on two fronts in Lebanon and Gaza.

The delivery was reported to include hundreds of small-diameter bombs and thousands of joint direct attack munition kits (JDAMs). JDAMs convert “dumb” bombs into precision-guided weapons.

Israel had at the time killed close to 44,300 Palestinians in Gaza since the war began and more than 3,800 people in Lebanon.

A report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in November revealed that Israel’s carpet bombing of the Gaza Strip had destroyed 87 percent (411,000) of housing units were destroyed leaving 1.34 million in need of emergency shelter and essential household items.

On Saturday, US media reports revealed that the Biden administration had notified US Congress of a planned $8bn arms sale to the Israeli regime, as a parting gift from the outgoing president.

The weapons will include 500-pound (226kg) warheads, precision-guided munitions, artillery shells, missiles for jets and attack helicopters, and bomb fuses, along with air-to-air missiles to intercept projectiles, the reports said.

The move came just over a fortnight before Biden leaves office. There have been tens of other press accounts of arms deliveries to the Israeli regime since October 7, 2023.

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