The State Department told Congress on Friday that the Biden administration believes Israel’s failure to protect civilians in Gaza likely violated international standards but has not identified specific instances that would justify withholding military aid.
In the government’s most detailed assessment of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, the State Department said in a written report that Israel “has the knowledge, experience and tools to implement best practices that reduce civilian harm in military operations.”
But it added that “the results on the ground, including high numbers of civilian casualties, raise significant questions about whether the IDF is fully utilizing these tools”.
Even so, the report – which appears to contradict itself in places – said the United States had no conclusive evidence of Israeli violations. The report noted the difficulty of gathering reliable information from Gaza, Hamas’s tactics of operating in civilian areas, and “Israel’s failure to share complete information to verify” whether U.S. weapons were used in specific incidents suspected of violating human rights law.
The report, authorized by President Joe Biden, also distinguishes between the general possibility that Israel violated the law and any conclusion about specific incidents that could prove Israel violated the law. It considered Israel’s assurances in March that it would use U.S. weapons in accordance with international law “credible and reliable,” allowing continued U.S. military assistance.
These conclusions are independent of Biden’s recent decision to delay the delivery of 3,500 bombs to Israel and his review of other weapons shipments. The president said the actions were in response to Israel’s stated plans to invade the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
The report said its findings were hampered in part by the challenges of gathering reliable information from war zones and the way Hamas operates in densely populated areas. The report also highlights that Israel has begun pursuing possible accountability for alleged violations, a key component of the United States’ assessment of whether to provide military assistance to allies accused of human rights abuses.
Israel has launched a criminal investigation into the conduct of its troops in Gaza and the IDF “is investigating hundreds of incidents that may involve wartime misconduct,” the report said.
The report also did not find that Israel deliberately blocked the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
While concluding that “Israeli actions and inactions” have slowed the flow of aid into Gaza, which is desperately short of essential goods such as food and medicine, it said, “We do not currently believe that the Israeli government is banning or using Limit aid in other ways.” Transport or deliver U.S. humanitarian assistance to the territory.
The discovery would trigger a U.S. legal ban on military aid to countries that block such aid.
Former State Department lawyer Brian Finucane said the report “went to great lengths” to avoid concluding that Israel violated any laws, a finding that would put significant new pressure on Biden to limit exports to the country. countries provide weapons.
Finucane, a critic of Israel’s military operations, said the report was “more timely” than he expected, but he still found it “watered down” and “received a lot of attention from lawyers.”
The findings further angered a handful of outspoken Democrats in Congress who have become increasingly critical of Israel’s behavior in Gaza. They believe that Israel uses American weapons to arbitrarily kill civilians and deliberately obstructs the humanitarian assistance provided by the United States.
Either act would violate U.S. laws governing the transfer of arms to foreign militaries, as well as international humanitarian law, which is based primarily on the Geneva Conventions.
The report does not define what is meant by other criteria for Israeli operations that “establish best practices for mitigating civilian harm,” although it cites Defense Department guidance on the subject issued last year that included some “measures not required by the laws of war.” ”.
“God help us all if this behavior meets international standards,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., told reporters after the report was released. “They don’t want to take any action to hold the Netanyahu government accountable for what’s happening,” he added, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Critics of Biden’s continued provision of most military support to Israel had hoped he would use the report as justification for further restrictions on arms shipments to the country. The United States provides $3.8 billion in annual military aid to Israel, and Congress last month approved an additional $14 billion in emergency funding.
Mr. Biden ordered the report through a national security memorandum called NSM-20. It requires all recipients of U.S. military assistance involved in conflicts to provide the United States with written assurances that they will comply with international law and will not impede the delivery of humanitarian assistance provided or supported by the U.S. government.
The report calls on the secretaries of state and defense to evaluate “any credible reports or allegations” that the use of U.S. weapons may violate international law.
Since the presidential memorandum was issued, an independent task force responded by issuing a lengthy report citing dozens of examples of possible violations by Israel. The report found that Israel had “systematically ignored fundamental principles of international law” including “carrying out attacks despite foreseeable disproportionate harm to civilians” in densely populated areas.
In a statement following the release of the State Department report, the task force said the U.S. document “is incomplete at best, and at worst fails to justify actions and actions that may violate international humanitarian law and may constitute war crimes.” Deliberately misleading.”
“Once again, the Biden administration is confronting the facts and pulling the curtain,” said task force members, including former State Department official Josh Paul, who resigned in October in protest of U.S. military support.
The State Department report expressed unequivocal sympathy for Israel’s military challenge and reiterated past statements made by the Biden administration after the October 7 Hamas attack that Israel had the “right to self-defense.” The report also noted that military experts have called Gaza “the most difficult battlefield faced by any army in modern warfare.”
“Because Hamas uses civilian infrastructure for military purposes and civilians as human shields, it is often difficult to determine what is actually happening in active war zones of this nature and whether legitimate military targets exist across Gaza,” the report said.
Even so, it pointed to a number of specific incidents in which Israeli forces killed civilians or aid workers, calling the latter “a specific area of concern.”
These incidents include the killing of seven World Central Kitchen workers in April. The report states that Israel has fired the officers involved in the attack and condemned the commander, calling the attack a “serious mistake” and considering prosecution.
Other incidents it cited include airstrikes on the crowded Jabaliya refugee camp on October 31 and November 1, which reportedly killed dozens of civilians, including children. It noted that Israel claimed it was targeting a senior Hamas commander and an underground Hamas facility at the site, and that its munitions “caused the collapse of the tunnel and the buildings and infrastructure above it.”
While the report does not find that Israel is intentionally obstructing the delivery of humanitarian aid, it cites several examples where the Israeli government has had a “negative impact” on aid distribution. These include “extensive bureaucratic delays” and the alleged active involvement of some senior Israeli officials in protests or attacks on aid convoys.
The report was submitted to Congress two days after the deadline set by Biden in his February memo, late Friday afternoon — a time administration officials chose to minimize the public impact of the announcement. Earlier in the day, White House spokesman John F. Kirby denied any “nefarious” motives for the delay.
