Israel's use of American Mark 80 bombs has devastating and disproportionate effects when dropped on targets in Gaza, a mostly densely populated urban area

When President Joe Biden threatened in recent days to halt some arms shipments to Israel if it proceeded with its plans to invade Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, the devastating effects of Mark 80 bombs was one of the weapons that particularly concerned him, The New York Times reported.

Many politicians and activists in the United States believe that the Mark 80 bombs, the 2,000-pound nombs (about 900 kilograms), are too powerful to be used responsibly in densely populated Gaza.

According to US Senator Bernie Sanders, “The United States cannot ask Netanyahu to stop bombing civilians one day and then send him thousands more two-thousand-pound bombs that could level entire city neighborhoods the next day.”

Sanders added, through his account on the “X” platform last March, “This is unacceptable... We must end our complicity: no more bombs for Israel.”

The New York Times indicated that Israel had previously used Mark 80 bombs in its war against the Palestinian resistance in Gaza during the years 2008 and 2011, and had also used the bomb to destroy a tower that housed the offices of media institutions, including Al Jazeera.

The newspaper pointed out that in the first two weeks of the war on Gaza, nearly 90% of the bombs that Israel dropped on Gaza were bombs weighing between one thousand and two thousand pounds, according to a senior American military official who indicated that the rest of the attacks were carried out using small diameter weighs 250 lbsbombs.

The paper stated that an investigation she conducted in December indicated that American bombs weighing two thousand pounds were responsible for some of the worst attacks on Palestinian civilians since the beginning of the aggression on Gaza.

The United States had a monopoly for some time on the manufacture of these bombs, but these bombs are now manufactured and sold in a number of countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Italy, Pakistan, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.

The New York Times report indicated that Israel manufactures its own versions of bombs, but published data indicates that Israel buys most of its bombs from the United States through an annual grant worth $3.5 billion from American taxpayers’ money.