The US failed to act on 500 cases where its weapons harmed civilians in Gaza News of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

The United States has identified about 500 reports that Israeli forces have harmed and killed Gaza civilians with US-supplied weapons, but has taken no action on any of them, The Washington Post and Reuters news agency reported.

The incidents have been collected since Oct. 7, 2023, using the U.S. State Department’s Civilian Harm Incident Response Guide, the official mechanism for tracking and evaluating any reports of gun abuse of American origin, the Post reported Wednesday.

Among the cases referred to the State Department, according to people familiar with the matter, is the killing in January of six-year-old Hind Rajab and her family in their car, in which fragments of a US-made 120 mm tank shell were allegedly found. scene.

There were fragments of US small-diameter bombs photographed in a family’s home and a school that sheltered displaced people after airstrikes in May killed dozens of women and children.

And at the site of the July attack that killed dozens of Palestinians was the tail keel of a Boeing-made Joint Direct Attack Munition.

State Department officials gathered information about the incidents from public and other sources, including media reports, civil society groups, and foreign government contacts.

The mechanism, created last August to apply to all countries receiving American weapons, has three stages: incident analysis, policy impact assessment and coordinated department action, according to a December internal State Department cable seen by Reuters.

None of the cases in Gaza have yet reached the third stage of action, said a former US official familiar with the case.

Options, a former official told Reuters, could range from working with the Israeli government to help mitigate the damage to suspending existing arms export licenses or denying future permits.

“Very difficult work”

President Joe Biden’s administration said it was reasonable to believe Israel violated international law during the conflict, but assessing individual incidents was “very difficult work,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters Wednesday.

“We’re conducting these investigations and we’re conducting them thoroughly and we’re conducting them aggressively, but we want to get the right answer and it’s important that we don’t rush to a predetermined outcome and that we don’t skip any work,” said Miller, adding that Washington has consistently raised concerns about harming civilians with Israel.

John Rumming Chappell, a legal and policy adviser who focuses on U.S. security assistance and arms sales at the Center for Civilians in Conflict, told the Post that U.S. officials are “ignoring evidence of widespread civilian harm and brutality in order to support policies that actually unconditional arms transfers. government of (Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin) Netanyahu.”

“When it comes to the Biden administration’s gun policy, everything looks good on paper, but in practice it has turned out to be nonsensical when it comes to Israel,” he added.

Mike Casey, who worked on Gaza issues at the State Department’s Office of Palestine Affairs in Jerusalem, told the Post that senior officials routinely gave the impression that their goal in discussing any alleged abuses by Israel was to find out how issue in a smaller form. negative light

“There’s a feeling of, ‘How do we do it right?'” Casey, who resigned in July, was quoted as saying. “There are no questions like, ‘How do we get to the real truth about what’s going on here?’

High-ranking officials, he said, often rejected the credibility of Palestinian sources, eyewitness accounts, non-governmental organizations, official reports of the Palestinian Authority and even the UN.

William D. Hartung, a co-author of the Watson Institute report and an expert on the U.S. arms industry and military budget at the Quincy Institute, told the paper that it was “almost impossible” for Israel not to violate U.S. law, “given the level of carnage that is taking place and the superiority of American weapons “.

Oren Marmorstein, a spokesman for Israel’s foreign ministry, declined to discuss with the Post the U.S. investigation or Washington’s efforts to limit civilian harm.

The Israeli army says it is making “significant efforts” to avoid harming civilians, but cites the presence of Hamas militants among civilians as justification for bombing schools, hospitals, mosques and tent cities.

Gaza’s health ministry says most of the 43,163 people killed since October 7 last year were women and children.