Troops from the IDF’s 98th Division operating in Jabalia, the northern Gaza Strip, May 2024. Photo: Israel Defense Forces.
Imposing an arms embargo on Israel would strengthen the terrorist group Hamas, prolong the ongoing war in Gaza, and worsen the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian enclave, according to John Spencer, the chair of urban warfare studies at West Point’s Modern Warfare Institute.
US Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) hosted a discussion with Spencer on his podcast earlier this week about urban conflict around the world, and part of the conservation focused on the potential consequences of placing an arms embargo on Israel amid the Jewish state’s military campaign against Hamas in Gaza.
During the discussion, Spencer argued that withholding weapons from Israel could have the unintended consequence of causing more death and destruction in Gaza. Spencer, who served in the US Army for 25 years and did two tours in Iraq, asserted that barring countries from using bombs, missiles, and mortars in urban locations such as Gaza will “drive war into populated areas.”
The urban warfare expert explained that implementing a weapons ban against the Jewish state would only incentivize Hamas to double-down on tactics that prolong the war and endanger the lives of civilians. He pointed out that heavy munitions, such as 2,000-pound bombs, are capable of penetrating the earth and collapsing underground tunnels, which Hamas has built and utilized to hide hostages, plan attacks, and use civilians as human shields. Therefore, Spencer argued, a ban on arms transfers to Israel would lead Hamas to build more tunnels underneath the besieged enclave.
Spencer suggested that a media-driven pressure campaign against Israel has resulted in a “restriction” on arms transfers to the Jewish state. He stated that the insistence from so-called “Western, moral, law-abiding countries” that Israel not use heavy weaponry in densely populated areas is at odds with the best urban warfare practices. Through hamstringing the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Spencer argued these restrictions could allow Hamas to potentially turn a single building in Gaza into a “months-long battle.”
He also argued that depriving Israel of heavy bombs would force the Jewish state to unnecessarily put its own soldiers at risk to confront terrorists. Spencer claimed that Israel should be allowed to use heavy bombs as a “tool” to vanquish Hamas, assuming that the military is following “the law of proportionality, discrimination, distinction.”
Spencer has previously said that Israel has “followed the laws of war, legal obligations, best practices in civilian harm mitigation, and still found a way to reduce civilian casualties to historically low levels.”
Calls for enacting a US arms embargo against Israel have grown louder in recent months, with critics claiming that the Israeli military campaign has gone too far and created dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza.
Although demands for a weapons blockade against the Jewish state were originally stemmed from the most progressive corners of the US Congress, they have expanded to include many more traditionally moderate lawmakers. Last month, for example, 19 senators voted to implement a ban on sending Israel certain additional weapons, marking an unprecedented shift against the Jewish state among federal lawmakers.
More recently, a group of 20 Democratic lawmakers in the US House earlier this week sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin urging the Biden administration to “suspend offensive weapons” to Israel due to the country’s military campaign in Gaza.
The letter came days after a group of 77 Democrats in the House sent a letter to Blinken and Austin demanding that the Biden administration provide an assessment of Israel’s “compliance with all relevant US policies and laws,” suggesting that the Middle East’s lone democracy and Washington’s closest ally in the region is violating international humanitarian law in Gaza.
Israel says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties in Gaza, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targets them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication. However, Hamas, which rules Gaza, has in many cases prevented people from leaving, according to the Israeli military.
Another challenge for Israel has been Hamas’s widely recognized military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.
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