The American website Axios attributed American officials to telling the site that the Biden administration has once again suspended licenses to sell more than 20,000 American-made rifles to Israel due to concerns about attacks by extremist Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank.

The decision to send the arms deal for further review by the State Department indicates that the Biden administration remains concerned that the Israeli government is not doing enough to curb extremist settler violence.

In the first week of the war it was waging on the Gaza Strip, Israel requested these rifles for “civilian first response teams in Israeli villages near the borders with Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, where these teams, made up of local residents, receive weapons and training from the Israeli police to be the first responders in the event of a terrorist attack occurred,” according to the report.

But the Biden administration dealt with caution with the Israeli request, according to Axios, who explained that this was due to fears that the far-right Minister of National Security who supervises the police, Itamar Ben Gvir, would distribute rifles to extremist settlers in the West Bank, according to American officials.

The Biden administration and Congress did not approve export licenses for American defense companies until they were certain that the weapons would not go to civilian teams in Jewish settlements.

But the website revealed that several weeks after approving the deal, the US State Department decided to slow down the process and subject the licenses to a new review, US officials said.

In a related issue, American officials said that the Biden administration currently has no plans to impose conditions on the military aid it provides to Israel, despite increasing calls from Democratic lawmakers and human rights organizations to stop providing weapons, unless Israel does more to protect civilians in Gaza.