The US House of Representatives will vote on Saturday on aid to Ukraine and Israel

The US House of Representatives will vote on Saturday on separate bills related to allocating military aid packages to Ukraine and Israel, according to Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said on Wednesday, at a time when President Joe Biden urged representatives to pass them urgently.

This long-awaited vote will allow Ukraine to obtain much-needed aid for its military forces, which suffer from a shortage of ammunition as they continue their fight against Russian forces.

The US president Joe Biden has urged Congress to expedite the passage of the bill.

Biden said, according to a statement issued by the White House, that if Congress ratifies it, “I will immediately sign it into law in order to send a message to the world: We stand with our friends, and we won’t allow Iran or Russia to succeed”.

The Democratic president wrote in an article published in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, “If the two countries (Israel and Ukraine) are able to fully defend their sovereignty, they depend on American aid to do so, including weapons”.

“We’re facing a pivotal moment,” he added.

Representatives will vote on four draft legislations; The first project provides for providing aid, especially military, to Ukraine amounting to approximately $61 billion.

Another draft also provides for the allocation of more than $26 billion to support Israel and billions of dollars for Taiwan.

The White House provided cautious support for these new projects on Tuesday, before Biden announced his explicit support for them.

He said in the article published on Wednesday, “Both Ukraine and Israel are being attacked by shameless enemies who seek to eliminate their existence”.

He pointed out that Russian President Vladimir Putin “wants to subjugate the Ukrainian people and annex their nation to a new Russian empire”.

As for Israel, he considered that “the Iranian government wants to destroy it, and thus erase the only Jewish state in the world from the map”.

He stressed that the United States “should never accept any of these results”.

Ukraine is suffering from a severe shortage of ammunition in the midst of its war with Russia, while all US aid provided to it in this context has been exhausted.

For its part, Israel faced an unprecedented attack on Saturday night by Iran in response to the bombing of Tehran’s consulate in Damascus.

The attack came in light of escalating regional tensions against the backdrop of the war in Gaza.

The Senate approved a $60 billion military and economic aid package for Ukraine in February.

However, Republicans in the House of Representatives refused to consider the text in light of disagreements with Democrats on several issues, including the immigration issue.

If the Republican-majority House of Representatives adopts the new texts on Saturday, they will be transferred to the Democratic-majority Senate for study and approval, and will then be transferred to Biden’s office for issuance.

But a new crisis is looming on the horizon of the House of Representatives against the backdrop of these draft legislations, as Johnson announced them on Monday and faced rejection from some of his Republican colleagues, which brought back to the fore the possibility of submitting a motion of no confidence against him.

His predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, was dismissed last year in a move led by Republican Party representatives who support former President Donald Trump.

In this context, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on X that Mike Johnson plunged the Republican Party “into chaos by providing a service to the Democrats and adopting Biden’s agenda”.

She added, “Now, he will finance wars abroad, considering that the Speaker of the House of Representatives must announce a date for his resignation and allow the Republicans to elect a new president who will put America first and advance the Republican Party’s agenda”.

However, the Speaker of the House of Representatives ruled out any voluntary departure from his position.

“I’ll not resign,” he told the media, describing the threat of no confidence in him as “ridiculous”.