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The Trump administration is planning to deliver powerful 2,000lb bombs to Israel as part of an upcoming arms deal, weapons that prompted such concerns about the possibility of mass casualties in Gaza that the Biden administration paused their delivery two years ago.
The $2.8bn package includes 40,000 bombs, made up of 20,000 MK-84s and 20,000 BLU-117s, according to two US officials and a person familiar with the plan who spoke on Tuesday on condition of anonymity to discuss the package, which is not yet final.
Congress has been informally notified about the pending deal, most of which is to be paid for with foreign military financing – in which US taxpayer dollars are given to Israel to turn around and buy the weapons from the United States.
The proposed sale is just the latest in a series of Trump administration steps to improve Israeli’s military capacity. The war on Gaza has left tens of thousands of Palestinians dead and has decimated the territory. The US had brokered a fragile ceasefire, but it has been violated several times.
The package, which was reported earlier by the Washington Post, comes as Israel has faced increasing international isolation over its war on Gaza in response to the deadly 7 October 2023 attacks by Hamas.
As soon as Trump returned to office in 2025, he lifted a hold on one shipment of MK-84 bombs to Israel imposed by the Biden administration in 2024. In the first months of Israel’s offensive on Gaza, following the 7 October attack, the Biden administration had sent thousands of the 2,000lb bombs to Israel.
Last year, the Trump administration bypassed a normal congressional review process and approved a nearly $3bn sale to Israel that included more than 35,500 of the bombs. The administration then approved a new series of arms sales to Israel totaling $6.67bn in January.
The 2,000lb bombs have multiple variants, with some designed to penetrate deep, underground targets while others detonate above ground and cause widespread damage.
American-made one-ton bombs have been used to hundreds of times in deadly strikes in Gaza and Lebanon. The New York Times reported in late 2023 that Israel had routinely dropped MK-84 bombs in areas of Gaza it had designated as safe for civilians.
Trevor Ball, a former explosive-ordnance-disposal technician for the US army who studies open-source images of civilian harm caused by US weapons, told the Post that the Israeli military uses MK-84 bombs to destroy entire buildings in pursuit of suspected militants. “If Hezbollah or whoever is in a building, an MK-84 will bring down the whole building,” Ball said.
Though the Israeli military has offered few details about what bombs and artillery it has used in Gaza, experts analyzing strike footage and blast fragments found on-site believe US-made bombs have been used there, targeting a tunnel network reportedly used by Hamas but also killing people in densely populated areas.
The Hamas-led attack on southern Israel in 2023 killed around 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage. Israel has since killed more than 73,264 Palestinians, including those killed in violation of the ceasefire, Gaza’s health ministry said.
Robert Mackey contributed reporting
