close
close

US fails to take action in 500 cases where its weapons harmed civilians in Gaza | Israeli-Palestinian Conflict News

US fails to take action in 500 cases where its weapons harmed civilians in Gaza | Israeli-Palestinian Conflict News

According to The Washington Post and Reuters news agency, the United States has identified approximately 500 reports of Gaza civilians being harmed and killed by Israeli forces with US-supplied weapons, but has not taken action on any of them.

The incidents have been collected since Oct. 7, 2023, by the U.S. State Department’s Civilian Harm Incident Response Guidance, a formal mechanism for tracking and reviewing reported misuse of U.S.-origin weapons, the Post reported Wednesday.

Among the cases submitted to the State Department, according to people familiar with the matter, are the January murder of six-year-old Hind Rajab and her family in their car, in which pieces of a U.S.-made 120mm fuel round would have been found by the police. scene.

Shrapnel from small-bore U.S. bombs had been photographed at a family’s home and at a school protecting displaced civilians after airstrikes killed dozens of women and children in May.

And then there was the tailfin of a Boeing-made Joint Direct Attack Munition at the scene of a July attack that killed dozens of Palestinians.

State Department officials gathered the incidents from public and other sources, including media reports, civil society groups and contacts with foreign governments.

The mechanism, which was introduced in August last year and is to be applied to all countries receiving US weapons, consists of three phases: incident analysis, policy impact assessment and coordinated department action, according to a December internal State Department cable reviewed by Reuters .

None of the Gaza cases had reached the third phase of action, said a former US official familiar with the case.

Options, the former official told Reuters, could range from working with the Israeli government to help limit the damage, to suspending existing arms export licenses or withholding future approvals.

‘Very difficult work’

President Joe Biden’s administration has said it is reasonable to assess that Israel violated international law in the conflict, but assessing individual incidents was “very difficult work,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said on Wednesday to reporters.

“We conduct those studies, and we conduct them thoroughly, and we conduct them aggressively, but we want to get to the right answer, and it’s important that we don’t jump to a predetermined result and that we don’t skip all the work,” Miller said, adding that Washington continues to express concern about civilian harm to Israel.

John Ramming Chappell, a legal and policy advisor focused on U.S. security assistance and arms sales at the Center for Civilians in Conflict, told the Post that U.S. officials “ignored evidence of widespread harm and atrocities among civilians to maintain a policy of virtually unconditional arms transfers.” to the (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu government.”

“When it comes to the Biden administration’s gun policy, everything looks good on paper, but in practice it has proven meaningless when it comes to Israel,” he added.

Interactives-Latest US Weapons Package for Israel-August 14, 2024-1723626987
(Al Jazeera)

Mike Casey, who worked on Gaza issues at the State Department’s Bureau of Palestinian Affairs in Jerusalem, told the Post that senior officials routinely gave the impression that their goal in discussing any alleged abuse by Israel was to find out find out how they could place this in a less favorable context. negative light.

“There’s a feeling of, ‘How can we make this right?’” Casey, who resigned in July, was quoted as saying. “There’s no, ‘How do we find out the real truth about what’s going on here?'”

Senior officials, he said, have often dismissed the credibility of Palestinian sources, witness statements, non-governmental organizations, official reports from the Palestinian Authority and even the United Nations.

William D Hartung, co-author of the Watson Institute report and an expert on the arms industry and the US military budget at the Quincy Institute, told the newspaper that “it is almost impossible” that Israel is not violating US law “given the level of slaughter taking place, and the preponderance of American weapons.”

Oren Marmorstein, a spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, declined to discuss the U.S. investigations or Washington’s efforts to limit harm to civilians with the Post.

The Israeli military says it is making “significant efforts” to prevent harm to the civilian population, but has cited the presence of Hamas fighters among civilians as justification for carrying out bombings of schools, hospitals, mosques and tent camps.

Gaza’s Health Ministry says the majority of the 43,163 people killed since October 7 last year have been women and children.