The United States has identified approximately 500 reports of Gaza civilians injured and killed by Israeli forces with US-supplied weapons, but has taken no action on any of them , according to the Washington Post and the Reuters news agency.
The incidents have been collected since October 7, 2023, by the U.S. State Department’s Civilian Harm Incident Response Guidance, a formal mechanism for monitoring and evaluating any 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, is the January killing of six-year-old Hind Rajab and his family in their car with pieces of a 120mm tank shell. American manufacture which would have been found at the scene.
Shards from small-diameter US-made bombs were photographed at a family home and school sheltering displaced civilians after air attacks in May killed dozens of women and children.
And there was the drift 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 outlets, civil society groups and contacts with foreign governments.
The mechanism, established in August last year to be applied to all countries that receive US weapons, involves three stages: incident analysis, political impact assessment and coordinated department action, according to an internal department cable December state report reviewed by Reuters.
None of the cases in Gaza have yet reached the third stage of action, a former U.S. official familiar with the matter said.
Options, the former official told Reuters, could range from working with the Israeli government to help mitigate the damage, to suspending existing arms export licenses or withholding future approvals.
“Very difficult work”
President Joe Biden’s administration said it was reasonable to assess that Israel violated international law in the conflict, but assessing individual incidents was “very difficult work,” the spokesperson told reporters Wednesday. statement from the Department of State, Matthew Miller.
“We do these investigations, and we do them thoroughly and aggressively, but we want to get to the right answer, and it’s important that we don’t jump to a predetermined outcome and skip the questions. no work,” Miller said, adding that Washington constantly raises concerns about harm to civilians with Israel.
John Ramming Chappell, a legal and policy advisor specializing in U.S. security assistance and arms sales at the Center for Civilians in Conflict, told the Post that U.S. officials were “ignoring evidence of widespread harm and atrocities against civilians to maintain a policy of virtually unconditional arms transfers. to the government of (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu.”
“When it comes to the Biden administration’s arms policy, everything looks good on paper but turns out to be meaningless in practice when it comes to Israel,” he added.
Mike Casey, who worked on Gaza issues in the State Department’s Bureau of Palestinian Affairs in Jerusalem, told the Post that senior officials routinely gave the impression that their objective was to discuss any alleged abuses by ‘Israel was figuring out how to present it in a less negative light.
“There’s this feeling of, ‘How can we make this right?'” Casey, who resigned in July, was quoted as saying. “There is no question: ‘How can we find out the real truth about what is happening here?'”
Senior officials, he explained, often dismissed the credibility of Palestinian sources, testimony, non-governmental organizations, official Palestinian Authority accounts and even the United Nations.
William D. Hartung, an expert on the arms industry and the U.S. military budget at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told the newspaper that “it is almost impossible” that Israel is not violating U.S. law “being given the level of massacre underway, and the preponderance of American weapons.”
Oren Marmorstein, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, declined to discuss with the Post the U.S. investigations or Washington’s efforts to limit harm to civilians.
The Israeli military says it is making “significant efforts” to prevent harm to civilians, but has cited the presence of Hamas fighters among civilians as justification for carrying out bombings on schools, hospitals, mosques and tent encampments. .
Gaza’s health ministry says the majority of the 43,163 people killed since October 7 last year were women and children.
