Israel may have committed violations of International Law but there is no specific evidence to confirm this, much less that they occurred with American weapons, which would allow Washington to continue sending it military aid. This is the main and convoluted conclusion of the report that Joe Almost three months ago, Biden commissioned the State Department to deal with the war in Gaza, which has ended up calling into question the president of the United States himself and generated an extremely serious political earthquake in the middle of the electoral pre-campaign. The document, delivered this Friday to Congress, has angered conservatives and pro-Israel groups for questioning the ethics of a country allied to the United States, but has also irritated Democrats for its lack of clarity and the absence of a decisive position. by the White House.
The State Department argues in this controversial document that the Government of Benjamin Netanyahu and the Defense Forces have “the knowledge, experience and tools to implement best practices” that lead to “mitigating civilian harm in their military operations” in Loop. However, “the results on the ground raise substantial doubts” about whether the Israeli army is sufficiently using this knowledge. The report highlights “the high levels of civilian victims” recorded during the attacks in the Strip, which already exceed 35,000 dead and more than 100,000 injured, many of them children, women and the elderly.
The most significant thing is that, at the same time that it makes this complaint about the serious damage to civilians, Washington recognizes that Hamas’s strategy of hiding and fighting among the population, the difficulties of investigating in war areas and the gaps coming from its own The Israeli government, which “has not shared complete information,” prevents the United States from providing conclusive evidence of alleged human rights violations by Tel Aviv. What the State Department does make clear is that Israel’s promise that the weapons sent by the United States would be used in accordance with International Law are “credible and reliable.”
In other words, the report “sees as reasonable” the possibility that the Israeli military has violated civil rights in its operations, but no specific cases have been found to prove it, nor is there evidence of irregular use of rockets and other munitions. delivered by Washington. The conclusion has provoked rejection from humanitarian organizations, who consider that the Biden Administration “does everything possible” to exonerate the Israeli army and ease its own conscience regarding arms exports. It has also irritated a Democratic minority in Congress, whose view is that Netanyahu’s government is paralyzing the delivery of humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians and has massacred civilians even with American weapons.
The presentation of the report on a Friday afternoon, on the eve of the weekend, has encouraged suspicions that the White House wanted it to go as unnoticed as possible. It comes a few days after Biden stopped the shipment of a shipment of projectiles to show his disagreement with Netanyahu’s decision to go ahead with the invasion of Rafah. But the document has also been presented shortly after another convoluted decision by the American Administration not to sanction a particularly violent battalion of the Israel Defense Forces, composed of ultra-Orthodox and settlers, with similar arguments: it is likely that this brigade committed outrages against civilians, but only a small number of cases have been confirmed and have been punished by the Israeli justice system itself. In this way, Washington avoided taking a stand and allowed the battalion to benefit from its multimillion-dollar military aid. In April, Congress approved more than 11 billion euros to finance different items destined for Tel Aviv.
Precisely, the State Department draws attention in this latest evaluation of Gaza to Israel’s efforts to investigate alleged violations of the law committed by its troops. The commanders “are examining hundreds of incidents,” says the dossier, where statements appear that critics classify as biased. Among them, the Department recognizes Israel’s “right to defend itself” after the Hamas attacks, blames this Islamist organization for using the Palestinian population as “human shields” and compiles a multitude of military analyzes that see the Strip as one of the most complex battlefields of a “modern war.”
However, the investigation also casts shadows on the way Israeli troops act, in what it euphemistically calls a “specific area of concern.” This chapter includes the murder last month of seven volunteers from World Central Kitchen, chef José Andrés’ humanitarian organization, bombed after a food delivery in central Gaza. The United States also points to airstrikes on the Jabaliya refugee camp that caused hundreds of deaths and disturbances at some food distributions.
The conclusions of the State Department fundamentally represent a setback for the sector of politicians and American citizens who hoped that this report would serve to stop military aid to Israel. “If this behavior (that of the Netanyahu Government) meets international standards, then God help us all,” Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen declared this Saturday. “Once again, the Biden Administration has looked the facts in the face and then closed the curtains,” said an independent working group that has been documenting Tel Aviv’s “systematic disregard” for months. International right. The team is made up of high-level experts, such as Josh Paul, a former State Department official who left his position in October in protest of US military aid to Israel.
The curious thing about the matter is that the State Department document does not satisfy pro-Israel groups either, since it does not even remotely clear up the integrity of the military operations in Gaza, nor of the Republicans. They are very upset by the US president’s recent criticism of the high number of civilian victims in the war or the intervention in Rafah. Conservative Senator Tom Cotton has expressed on social media that Biden’s “de facto position is a victory for Hamas.”
The current reality is that the Democratic president faces a devilish situation. The war against Hamas has polarized American society in a way that has rarely happened since Vietnam or, in its closest example, Trump’s presidential defeat in 2020. Biden knows that he has lost much of the trust gained after guaranteeing his support for Israel in the moments of global commotion following the Hamas attacks, which killed 1,200 Israeli citizens on October 7. And he is also aware that in this growing polarization, reflected in universities, Congress and media gatherings, there is a large mass of voters who could turn the November elections into a plebiscite regarding their position on the Israeli conflict. . White House advisors assure that, faced with extremes, Biden seeks restraint in the midst of the storm. Meanwhile, his government is preparing for the next assault, which will likely take place when Congress demands a more exhaustive study of the situation in Gaza.
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