The US government on Tuesday approved the sale of more than $20 billion worth of military equipment to Israel, brushing aside pressure and calls from human rights groups to halt the supplies.

The approval was announced as the war in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas enters its 313th day, or 11th month, and US President Joe Biden calls for a ceasefire in the besieged Palestinian enclave.

The State Department said in its legally required notification to Congress approving the sale that the hardware would “enhance Israel’s ability to counter current and future hostile threats.”

Included in the package are 50 F-15 multi-role fighter jets, nearly 33,000 tank shells, 50,000 mortar shells, etc.

Deliveries of the hardware will take years. Those of the F-15s, equipped with powerful radars and secure communications equipment, will not begin until 2029.

“The US is committed to Israel’s security and it is vital to US national security interests that we help Israel develop and maintain a strong defense capability,” the US State Department said in its memo on the Boeing-made fighters.

As for the ammunition for the tanks, the State Department estimates that they will allow Israel to strengthen its “defenses” and that they are also “a means of deterring regional threats.”

Human rights groups, as well as some Democratic elected officials, have called on President Biden to reduce or suspend arms sales to Israel, amid a devastating war in the Gaza Strip that has killed at least 39,929 people, according to the latest figures. of the Hamas Health Ministry.

The US Congress could in theory block this arms sale, but such a process is by definition difficult and has little chance of success.

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas, in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007, which the US and EU designate as a terrorist organization after its attack on southern sectors of the Israeli territory on October 7, in which they lost 1,198 people lost their lives, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data.