The Biden administration has received nearly 500 reports alleging that Israel used U.S.-supplied weapons for attacks that caused unnecessary harm to civilians in the
Gaza Strip, but it has failed to comply with its own policies requiring swift investigations of such claims, according to people familiar with the matter.
At least some of these cases presented to the State Department over the past year probably amount to violations of U.S. and international law, these people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss internal deliberations.
The reports are received from across the U.S. government, international aid organizations, nonprofits, media reports and other eyewitnesses. Dozens include photo documentation of U.S.-made bombfragments at sites where scores of children were killed, according to human rights advocates briefed on the process.
Yet despite the State Department’s internal
Civilian Harm Incident Response Guidance, which directs officials to complete an investigation and recommend action within two months of launching an inquiry, no single case has reached the “action” stage, current and former officials told The Washington Post. More than two-thirds of cases remain unresolved, they said, with many pending response from the Israeli government, which the State Department consults to verify each case’s circumstances.
Critics of the Biden administration’s consistent provision of arms to Israel, now about 13 months into a war that has killed at least 43,000 people, according to Gaza’s health authorities, say the handling of these reports is another illustration of the administration’s unwillingness to hold its close ally accountable for the conflict’s staggering toll.
“They’re ignoring evidence of widespread civilian harm and atrocities to maintain a policy of virtually unconditional weapons transfers to the Netanyahu government,” said John Ramming Chappell, a legal and policy adviser focused on U.S. security assistance and arms sales at the Center for Civilians in Conflict. “When it comes to the Biden administration’s arms policies, everything looks good on paper but has turned out meaningless in practice when it comes to Israel.”
The State Department declined to detail the volume of incidents under investigation. A spokesman, Matthew Miller, confirmed on Wednesday during a news conference held after the publication of this report that officials are reviewing “a number of incidents” and that “we have not yet gotten to the point with any of them that we’ve been able to make final determinations.”
Based on “the overall scope of the damage and the number of civilian lives that have been lost,” Miller said that it is “reasonable” to assess that Israel may have violated international law but that reaching such a conclusion is “incredibly difficult.”
“It takes gathering facts. It takes gathering information. And it takes ultimately making legal judgments about those facts. And, oftentimes, you have conflicting accounts of what happened, and it is our job to try to sort through that the best we can,” he said.
