By ELLEN KNICKMEYER (Associated Press)
WASHINGTON — Under pressure for its military assistance to Israel's conflict, the Biden administration is expected to issue a historic formal judgment this week on whether the airstrikes on Gaza and restrictions on aid delivery have violated international and U.S. laws meant to protect civilians from the harshest effects of war.
A ruling against close ally Israel would increase pressure on President Joe Biden to limit the supply of weapons and funds to Israel's military. The Democratic administration took one of the initial steps in that direction recently, when it halted a shipment of 3,500 bombs due to concerns about Israel's planned attack on Rafah, a densely populated southern city with over a million Palestinians, as per a senior administration official.
The administration agreed in February at the insistence of Democrats in Congress to a negotiated agreement mandating it look at whether Israeli forces in Gaza have used U.S.-supplied weapons and other military aid in a lawful manner.
Also, under the agreement, it must inform Congress whether it believes that Israel has acted to "arbitrarily deny, restrict, or otherwise impede, directly or indirectly," delivery of any U.S.-supported humanitarian aid into Gaza for the starving civilians.
The deadline for the U.S. judgment is Wednesday, though State Department spokesman Matthew Miller informed reporters Tuesday “it’s possible it slips just a little bit.”
The administration is compelled to make a decision when turmoil in internationally brokered cease-fire negotiations and a threatened Israeli offensive on the densely populated southern Gaza city of Rafah — a move staunchly opposed by the U.S. — could alter both the course of Israel's conflict and Americans' backing for it.
Israel's effort to crush the Hamas militant group following its unexpected October assault and the resulting catastrophe for Gaza's civilians have also sparked debate within the Biden administration and Congress over broader issues: Should the U.S. take action on serious human rights violations by one of its foreign military aid recipients when it witnesses them, as advocates assert U.S. law demands? Or only when it considers doing so serves U.S. strategic interests?
Democratic and Republican lawmakers openly frame the current decision in those terms.
“While human rights is an important component of the national interest, American priorities are much broader — particularly in an era of strategic competition,” Sen. Jim Risch, the ranking GOP member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Rep. Michael McCaul, Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote last week in urging to Biden to repeal his February directive, formally known as National Security Memorandum 20.
But Sen. Chris Van Hollen, the Democrat who spearheaded congressional negotiations with the White House to mandate the review, told reporters he feared the long-standing desire of American administrations to maintain the strong security partnership with Israel would shape the outcome.
Israel receives the most security help from the U.S. The suffering of Palestinians in the war in Gaza has caused protests. has stirred up demonstrations and other problems for Biden as he tries to win reelection against former President Donald Trump, a Republican.
The administration’s conclusions should be based on facts and law, not on their desires, according to Van Hollen who spoke to reporters last week.
When the White House agreed to the review, it was trying to prevent Democratic lawmakers and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders from restricting weapon shipments to Israel.
Hamas-led attacks led to Israel's offensive, resulting in about 1,200 deaths on Oct. 7. Nearly 35,000 Palestinian civilians, with two-thirds of them being women and children, have been killed since then, according to local health officials. U.S. and U.N. officials say there is now severe famine in northern Gaza due to Israeli restrictions on food shipments and the fighting.
Human rights groups have long accused Israeli security forces of mistreating Palestinians and have blamed Israeli leaders for not holding the responsible parties accountable.
Israel claims to be following all U.S. and international laws and to be investigating allegations of abuse by its security forces. It also says its campaign in Gaza is proportional to the threat it faces from Hamas.
As the suffering of Palestinian civilians worsened, Biden and his administration moved away from their initial strong public support of Israel and began to criticize its conduct in the war.
In December, Biden said that Israel was losing international support due to indiscriminate bombing. After Israeli forces targeted and killed seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen in April, the Biden administration indicated for the first time that it might reduce military aid to Israel if it didn’t change its approach to the war and humanitarian aid.
Republican Ronald Reagan was one of the last presidents to openly withhold some U.S. support for Israel’s military in order to pressure Israel over its offensives.
However, critics argue that Biden and recent presidents have turned a blind eye to allegations of extrajudicial killings and other abuses by Israel’s security forces against Palestinians. Two former State Department officials who left the government last year claim that they have accepted Israeli assurances over serious abuses that would lead to the suspension of military aid for any other foreign military partner. The administration denies having a double standard.
Now, however, Congress is forcing the administration to provide its most public evaluation in decades of whether Israel has used U.S. military support lawfully.
Under a 1997 congressional act called the Leahy Laws, if the U.S. finds credible evidence that a unit of foreign security forces has committed serious human rights violations, any U.S. aid to that unit is supposed to be immediately stopped.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote to House Speaker Mike Johnson last week that the U.S. found the evidence of such abuses by a specific Israeli unit to be credible. Blinken also noted that Israel had not yet corrected the unit’s wrongdoing, as stipulated by the Leahy laws for the suspension of military aid to be lifted. Instead of suspending the aid, Blinken said that the U.S. would work with Israel to “discuss how to effectively address the issues with this unit.”
Israeli officials have identified the group as the Netzah Yehuda, which is accused of causing the death of a Palestinian American man and other mistreatment in the Israeli-occupied West Bank before the conflict in Gaza started.
Tim Rieser, an experienced Senate foreign policy staff member who assisted now-retired Sen. Patrick Leahy in creating the law, said if it had been used in Israel, “maybe it would have been a warning.”
Instead, “what we’ve seen is that mistreatment of Palestinians are hardly punished,” Rieser told the AP.
While a determination against Israel under the national security memo wouldn’t force the administration to begin reducing military assistance for Israel, it would increase pressure on Biden to do so.
A report to the administration by an unofficial, self-formed panel of military experts and former State Department officials, including Josh Paul and Charles Blaha, points to specific Israeli attacks on aid convoys, journalists, hospitals, schools and refugee centers and other targets broadly protected by law. The report argues the administration must find Israel’s conduct in Gaza has violated the law. Amnesty International has argued the same.
The high civilian death tolls in Israel’s attacks go well beyond the laws of proportionality, the U.S. critics and rights groups say. They point to an Oct. 31 strike on a six-story apartment building in Gaza that killed at least 106 civilians. Critics say Israel provided no immediate explanation for that strike.
“They’re taking what we did in Mosul and Raqqa, and going tenfold beyond,” exceeding even what was allowed under U.S. rules of engagement at the time in the so-called war on terror, said Wes Bryant, a former Air Force targeting expert who led strike cells against the Islamic State and other extremist groups in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. He is among those urging the U.S. to condition military support to Israel.
“If this is the new standard for 21st-century warfare, we might as well go back to World War II,” Bryant said.
Israel and the Biden administration say Hamas’ presence in tunnels throughout Gaza, and alleged presence in hospitals and other protected sites, make it harder for Israeli forces to avoid high civilian casualties.
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