The US House of Representatives has approved $1bn in additional funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system after days of controversy around the push.
Legislators passed the bill in a 420 to nine vote on Thursday, paving the way for a significant increase in US support for the system.
The bill will now go to the Senate, where it is expected to pass easily before being signed into law by President Joe Biden, who already has signalled support for the additional aid.
The move came amid an intensifying debate about US support for Israel and as a growing number of progressive voices in Congress are calling on Biden to condition US assistance to Israel on the country’s human rights record.
Earlier this week, the inclusion – and subsequent exclusion – of the Iron Dome funding from a different bill created an uproar in Washington.
The $1bn provision first appeared on Tuesday morning in proposed House of Representatives legislation aimed at providing short-term emergency funding for the US government to avoid a shutdown. But by the afternoon, it had been removed without explanation.
While various US media outlets have reported that progressive lawmakers were responsible for excluding the funding for Israel from Tuesday’s bill, no legislator has taken credit for the move.
Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP), said it was “strange” to include $1bn in aid for Israel in a generic bill designed to fund the US government to “keep the lights on”.
Democratic leaders, she said, wanted to “circumvent” discussions and debates that come with that typical legislative process by including the aid for Israel in the short-term funding bill.
“It strikes me as a remarkable own-goal by leadership because if they somehow thought that this would prevent members from speaking up and allow them to get this through without controversy, they were mistaken,” Friedman told Al Jazeera earlier this week.
Although the $1bn is in addition to the usual US funding for the Iron Dome, Republicans and pro-Israel Democrats expressed anger at the eventual dropping of the provision.
Significant increase
Supporters of the added funding say it aims to “replenish” the Iron Dome batteries after the recent fighting in Gaza, but the $1bn approved by the House on Thursday represents a significant increase of US funding for the programme.
Israel receives $3.8bn in US military assistance annually, codified through a 10-year memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by President Barack Obama in 2016. Of that, 500 million goes to missile defence annually. Last year, Congress granted $73 million for the Iron Dome specifically, one of several missile defence programmes.
