Mark Kelly won’t back conditions on aid to Israel amid Lebanon escalation

Biden feels Blinken ‘humiliated’ but Democrats in Congress still oppose conditioning military aid

Arizona Senator Mark Kelly says he won’t vote to condition aid to Israel as the death toll in neighboring Lebanon continues to grow from escalating Israeli strikes.

Kelly, who said earlier this year that he would support conditions on military aid if steps to minimize civilian casualties were not taken, told NBC’s Kristen Welker on Sunday that he hadn’t seen the Israeli government cross that line yet.

He added that he continues to have conversations with Israeli officials. Kelly, who sits on the Armed Services committee, would be a key vote on the passage of future aid packages.

“We continue to talk to our allies, Israel, about how they are conducting this operation,” he said. “Hey, civilian loss of life is tragic wherever it happens. The Palestinian people who live in Gaza; they’re not Hamas. There are Hamas terrorists there, that Israel is focused on eliminating...but it’s a continuous discussion.”

He was asked to clarify by Welker, who said it sounded as if he was “not at that point yet” where supporting conditions on military aid packages would get his vote. Kelly, a Democrat, affirmed that was an accurate read on his views.

"I've seen some positive responses from them when I have specifically asked them to do things differently,” he told Welker, stating that he would continue with dialogue until he feld that option had failed.

WATCH: Sen. Mark Kelly told #MTP in May that he'd condition aid to Israel if they don't "do a better job."

He now tells @kwelkernbc he's not at that point yet.

"I've seen some positive responses from them when I have specifically asked them to do things differently.” pic.twitter.com/G0Uv8gcTFB

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) September 29, 2024

Kelly won a tough fight in the 2022 campaign cycle and is now seeing his home state return as a battleground for the presidential race once more. Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are committing significant resources to winning the state, which Joe Biden won in 2020.

The war in Gaza and its continued escalation has the potential to throw a wrench in Harris’s bid for the presidency this time around, as her opponent has hammered the Biden-Harris administration for supposedly allowing major conflicts to break out in the Middle East and eastern Europe under its watch. Separately, concerns and anger over the president’s handling of US-Israel relations is at an all-time high among Democrats, threatening voter enthusiasm particularly in places like Michigan, which has a high Arab-American population and is also a key swing state.

Harris’s ascendance to the top of the Democratic ticket has curbed some of the worst of that anger but she still faces deep skepticism from pro-Palestinian voters, which includes large segments of younger voters, after declining to allow a Palestinian-American speak at the Democratic National Convention in August.

As October dawns, it looks more likely than ever than that the conflict in Gaza and the inability of Joe Biden’s administration to broker a ceasefire will be a defining issue of the incumbent president’s legacy. Deaths in Gaza have passed 40,000 according to local officials, while Lebanese officials say the death toll in Beirut and southern Lebanon has climbed into the high hundreds after continued attacks from Israel.

The US was reported to have been kept in the dark regarding Friday’s strike targeting a top Hezbollah commander, Hassan Nasrallah, in Beirut. Biden himself was cited by a source familiar with the matter as having been frustrated by the attack, which confounded US efforts aimed at reaching a ceasefire, and felt that Israeli officials had humiliated US Secretary of State Antony Blinken with continued escalations, according to Politico.