Has Israel followed the law in the war in Gaza? US will issue unprecedented verdict

Faced with pressure for his military support for the war IsraelPresident Joe Biden’s administration is due this week to issue an unprecedented formal verdict on whether the bombing of Gaza and restrictions on aid deliveries have violated international and U.S. laws designed to protect civilians from the horrors of war.

A decision against US ally Israel would increase pressure on President Biden to stem the flow of weapons and money to the Israeli military. The Democratic government took one of the first steps in that direction by pausing the shipment of 3,500 bombs in the face of an imminent Israeli offensive on Rafah, a city in southern Gaza inhabited by more than a million Palestinians, a senior government official said.

The administration agreed in February, at the insistence of Democrats in Congress, to negotiate a deal that would require it to examine whether Israeli forces in Gaza had legally used weapons and other military assistance provided by the United States.

Additionally, according to the agreement, it must inform Congress if it considers that Israel has acted to “arbitrarily deny, restrict or impede, directly or indirectly”, the delivery of any US-backed humanitarian aid inside Gaza for the starving civilians there.

The deadline for a U.S. ruling is Wednesday, although State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters Tuesday that “it may be just a little delayed”.

The government is forced to make a decision when turmoil over internationally mediated ceasefire negotiations and an imminent Israeli offensive in Rafah—a move the United States strongly opposes—could both change the course of the war in Israel as well as the support of Americans towards it.

Israel’s campaign to crush the Palestinian armed group Hamas following its surprise attack in October, and the disaster that followed for Gaza civilians, have also fueled debate within the Biden administration and Congress on broader questions: Should the United States Will the United States act on serious human rights violations committed by one of its foreign recipients of military support when it identifies them, as its defenders say is required by US law? Or only when you consider that doing so is useful for the strategic interests of the United States?

Democratic and Republican lawmakers openly formulate the current decision in those terms.

“While human rights are an important component of the national interest, American priorities are much broader, particularly in an era of strategic competition.“Senator Jim Risch, the ranking Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Michael McCaul, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote last week to urge Biden to repeal his February directive, formally known as National Security Memorandum 20.

But Sen. Chris Van Hollen, the Democrat who led congressional negotiations with the White House to order the review, told reporters he feared the longstanding desire of U.S. governments to maintain a strong security partnership with Israel would influence the result.

Israel is the largest recipient of American security assistance. Palestinian suffering in the war in Gaza has sparked protests and other challenges for Biden at home and abroad as she seeks re-election against former President Donald Trump, a Republican.

The government’s conclusions must “be seen based on facts and laws, and not based on what they wish they wereVan Hollen told reporters last week.

At the time the White House agreed to the review, it was working to prevent moves by Democratic lawmakers and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders to begin restricting arms shipments to Israel.

Israel launched its offensive after Hamas-led attacks killed about 1,200 people on October 7. Since then, nearly 35,000 Palestinians have died, two-thirds of them women and children, according to local health officials. U.S. and U.N. officials say total famine has occurred in northern Gaza due to both Israeli restrictions on food shipments and the fighting.

Human rights groups have long accused Israel’s security forces of committing abuses against Palestinians and Israeli leaders of failing to hold those responsible accountable.

Israel says it follows all U.S. and international laws, that it investigates allegations of abuse by its security forces and that its campaign in Gaza is proportionate to the existential threat it says Hamas represents.

As the suffering of Palestinian civilians grows, Biden and his administration have moved away from their initial unwavering public support for Israel and begun criticizing its conduct in the war.

Biden said in December that the “indiscriminate bombings” cost Israel international support. After Israeli forces targeted and killed seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen — a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization that provides meals around the world in the wake of disasters and exceptional situations — in April, the Biden administration signaled for the first time that time that it could cut military aid to Israel if it did not change its handling of the war and humanitarian aid.

Republican Ronald Reagan was one of the last presidents to openly suspend some US support for Israel’s military as a way to pressure Israel over its offensives.

But critics say Biden and other recent presidents have turned a blind eye when Israel’s security forces are accused of extrajudicial killings and other abuses against Palestinians. They have accepted Israeli assurances about alleged serious abuses that would lead to the suspension of military aid to any other foreign military partner, said two former State Department officials who left the government last year. The government denies that a double standard exists.

Now, however, Congress is forcing the administration to present its most public assessment in decades of whether Israel has used U.S. military support legally.

Under a 1997 congressional act known as the Leahy Act, when the United States finds credible evidence that a security unit of foreign forces has committed serious human rights abuses, any US aid to that unit is supposed to be automatically suspended.

Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, wrote last week to Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House of Representatives, that the United States found evidence of such abuses by a particular Israeli unit credible. Blinken added that Israel had yet to rectify the wrongdoings of that unit, something that according to the Leahy Law must occur for any suspension of military aid to be lifted. Blinken said that rather than suspending aid, the United States would work with Israel to “participate in identifying a path for effective remediation of this unit”.

Israeli officials have identified it as the Netzah Yehuda infantry unit, which is accused of the death of a Palestinian American and other abuses in the Israeli-occupied West Bank before the war broke out in Gaza.

Tim Rieser, a veteran member of the Senate foreign policy staff who helped Senator Patrick Leahy, now retired, draft the law, said that if it had been applied to Israel, “maybe it would have been a deterrent”.

Instead, “What we have seen is that abuses against Palestinians are rarely punished“Rieser added to the AP.

While a ruling against Israel based on the national security memorandum would not force the administration to begin cutting military support to Israel, it would increase pressure on Biden to do so.

A report to the government by an unofficial 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, refugee centers and other targets protected by the law. The report argues that the government must find that Israel’s conduct in Gaza has violated the law. Amnesty International has argued the same.

The high civilian death tolls in Israel’s strikes go far beyond the laws of proportionality, U.S. critics and human rights groups say. They point to an Oct. 31 attack on a six-story apartment building in Gaza that killed at least 106 civilians. Critics say Israel provided no immediate justification for that attack.

“They are taking what we did in Mosul and Raqqa, and taking it ten times further“exceed even what was allowed under U.S. rules of engagement at the time in the so-called war on terrorism, said Wes Bryant, who worked in the Air Force as a targeting expert and led attack cells against the Islamic State and other extremist groups in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. He is among those urging the United States to condition military support for Israel.

“If this is the new standard for warfare in the 21st century, we might as well return to World War II.”Bryant said.

Israel and the Biden administration say Hamas’ presence in tunnels throughout Gaza and its suspected presence in hospitals and other protected sites make it difficult for Israeli forces to avoid large numbers of civilian casualties.