The Biden administration’s report on whether Israel has violated U.S. and international humanitarian law during the war in Gaza has been delayed and will no longer be released Wednesday as planned, three Senate aides and a House aide told POLITICO.
If [it determines laws were broken], the U.S. would be expected to stop sending Israel military assistance.
still delayed. Place your bets on the reason.
A: Hey, it's a long report and things take time, especially when every day brings new allegations of misuse of weapons.
B: The report will say Israel is in the clear, and it's being delayed because that would put more pressure on Biden to release the weapons.
C: The report will say Israel is in violation of international law, and it's being delayed because that would (unless we are a lawless nation) shut off the transfer or weapons, and Biden would have no leverage with Bibi.
D: Something else.
President Biden’s striking
admission this week that American weapons are killing civilians in Gaza appeared to mark a turning point in U.S. policy toward Israel — coming days after the Israeli military made its first move on Rafah and before a highly anticipated government report on Israel’s adherence to the laws of war.
The United States has always been selective in how it invokes international law, experts say, and how it balances rights concerns with realpolitik. But its ongoing material support for Israel’s
war in Gaza has led to a rare surge in public backlash from former officials, who say the administration is dragging its feet on enforcing laws meant to limit or condition military assistance to foreign allies.
“Just from a legal perspective within U.S. domestic law, there’s a much wider body of rules that is being ignored right now,” said Josh Paul, who formerly worked on arms transfers at the State Department and is
the most senior U.S. official to resign over the war in Gaza. “The arms are just continuing to flow.”
“When you look at those collapsed buildings where people are trapped underneath, the odds are that that death and destruction is being caused by a United States-supplied weapon,” said Charles Blaha, who worked as director of the State Department’s Office of Security and Human Rights between 2016 and 2023 and contributed to the independent report.
Multiple American-made 2,000-pound bombs were probably used in a
daytime strike on the densely populated Jabalya refugee camp in November. The attack, which Israel said targeted a Hamas commander, killed more than 110 Palestinians.
Halting arms sales to Saudi Arabia [due to their use on civilians in Yemen], Paul recalled, “was a simple policy decision made by the Biden administration before they even took office and then communicated to us directly within 20 minutes of the swearing-in. The whole debate over Saudi arms certainly informed the discussion on the CAT [conventional arms transfer] policy.”
That updated policy guidance,
issued by the Biden administration in early 2023, is “in terms of human rights and international humanitarian law, the best conventional arms transfer policy ever,” Blaha said.
[Saudis get cut off in 20 minutes, but Israel has gotten a pass so far.]