US’s longstanding effort is to ensure Israel's qualitative military edge: Pentagon

By Diyar Guldogan

WASHINGTON (AA) - The US’s longstanding effort is to ensure Israel's qualitative military edge, a Pentagon spokesman said Thursday.

"When it comes to the provision of security assistance to include weapons and weapon systems, obviously I don't want to get ahead of those conversations. Those are always ongoing conversations," Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters when asked what types of weapons has the US not provided to Israel that it wanted.

"Through programs like foreign military finance, foreign military sales, again, it's part of our efforts, longstanding efforts to ensure Israel's qualitative military edge," he added.

His remarks came after US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Charles Q. Brown said Thursday that Israel has not received every weapon that it has asked for.

"Some of that is because they've asked for stuff that we either don't have the capacity to provide or are not willing to provide, not right now," he added.

Ryder said the US has a "very longstanding" security relationship with Israel, and after Oct. 7, the US worked very hard to rush security assistance to Israel in support of their efforts to defend themselves against attacks from Hamas and future terrorist attacks.

"But to get to your specific question, I don't have any information to provide beyond that," he said.

Turning to the construction of a floating pier off the coast of Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid to the besieged Strip, Ryder said everything is proceeding according to schedule.

"To my knowledge, everything's on track so far. We talked about the fact that we anticipate that capability will be operational within 60 days. So we're almost halfway there," he added.

In early March, the Department of Defense announced that it will undertake an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier on the coast of Gaza to deliver up to 2 million humanitarian aid meals per day.

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Palestinian enclave since an Oct. 7 cross-border attack by the Palestinian resistance group Hamas, in which 1,139 Israelis were killed.

More than 32,500 Palestinians have since been killed and more than 74,900 injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

The Israeli army has also imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip, leaving most of the population, particularly residents of the north, on the verge of starvation.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which in an interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

In its Thursday verdict indicating additional measures, the top court ordered Israel to ensure "unhindered provision" of urgent aid to Gaza. The ICJ said that “Palestinians in Gaza are no longer facing only a risk of famine...but that famine is setting in.”