The US has spent a record $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel since the war in Gaza began last October 7 and led to escalating conflict around the Middle East, according to a report for Brown University’s Costs of War project, released on the anniversary of Hamas’ attacks on Israel.
An additional $4.86 billion has gone into the stepped-up US military operations in the region since the October 7, 2023, attacks, researchers said in findings first provided to The Associated Press. That includes the costs of a Navy-led campaign to quell strikes on commercial shipping by Yemen’s Houthis, who are carrying them out in solidarity with the fellow Iranian-backed group Hamas.
It’s the longest war between Israelis and Arabs since the end of the conflict that set the boundaries of the Israeli state in 1949. It is also by far the deadliest. More than 1,500 Israelis have been killed, mostly during Hamas’s attack on October 7 last year, and roughly 250 others were abducted. More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s counterattack, which began with one of the most intense bombardments ever recorded in modern warfare, reported The New York Times.
A wider, multifront war between Israel and Hamas’s regional allies is now unfolding – most recently with Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and Iran’s bombardment of Israel – but the core of the conflict remains the original battle between Hamas and Israel, and the almost Sisyphean challenge of ending it.
The Brown University report – completed before Israel opened the second front against Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon late last month – is one of the first tallies of estimated US costs as the Joe Biden administration backs Israel in its conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon and seeks to contain hostilities by Iran-allied armed groups in the region.
The financial toll is on top of the cost in human lives: Hamas militants killed more than 1,200 people in Israel a year ago and took others hostage. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed nearly 42,000 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count.
At least 1,400 people in Lebanon, including Hezbollah fighters and civilians, have been killed since Israel greatly expanded its strikes in that country in late September.
The financial costs of the war in the Middle East were calculated by Linda J Bilmes, a professor at Harvard’s John F Kennedy School of Government, who has assessed the full costs of US wars since the September 11, 2001, attacks, and fellow researchers William D Hartung and Stephen Semler.
Israel, a protege of the US since its 1948 founding, is the biggest recipient of American military aid in history, getting $251.2 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars since 1959, the report says. The $17.9 billion spent since October 7, 2023 is by far the most military aid sent to Israel in one year. The US committed to providing billions in military assistance to Israel and Egypt each year when they signed their 1979 US-brokered peace treaty, and an agreement since the Obama administration set the annual amount for Israel at $3.8 billion through 2028.
The US aid since the Gaza war started includes military financing, arms sales, at least $4.4 billion in drawdowns from US stockpiles and hand-me-downs of used equipment.
Unlike the United States’ publicly documented military aid to Ukraine, it was impossible to get the full details of what the US has shipped Israel since last October 7, so the $17.9 billion for the year is a partial figure, the researchers said. They cited Biden administration “efforts to hide the full amounts of aid and types of systems through bureaucratic maneuvering”.
Funding for the key US ally during a war that has exacted a heavy toll on civilians has divided Americans during the presidential campaign. But support for Israel has long carried weight in US politics, and Biden said on Friday that “no administration has helped Israel more than I have”.
The Biden administration has bolstered its military strength in the region since the war in Gaza started, aiming to deter and respond to any attacks on Israeli and American forces. Those additional operations cost at least $4.86 billion, the report said, not including beefed-up US military aid to Egypt and other partners in the region.
