US officials warned Biden administration about possible Israeli war crimes in Gaza: Report
In the days following the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attacks on Israel and Israel's subsequent launching of the war on Gaza, several senior US officials warned the Biden administration about possible Israeli war crimes, according to a report by Reuters revealing multiple exchanges between top Biden officials.
Dana Stroul, the then deputy assistant secretary of defence for the Middle East, wrote an email on 13 October to senior Biden aides saying that Israel's call for the forced displacement of Palestinians in northern Gaza could violate international law.
The email from Stroul came out of a conversation she had with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) which she said left her "chilled to the bone".
Biden's top Middle East official, Brett McGurk, responded to the email saying the US "might be able to" convince Israel to extend its deadline for Palestinians to be displaced, but the ICRC and other aid agencies should prepare for it.
In another message in this email chain, Paula Tufro, a senior White House official in charge of humanitarian response, wrote that there is "simply no way to have this scale of a displacement without creating a humanitarian catastrophe".