Internal emails show 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).
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".
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Andrew Miller, then the deputy assistant secretary at the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, said if the US was "inclined to weigh in with the Israelis to dissuade them from seeking mass evacuations, we will have to do it soon, at a high level and at multiple touchpoints". Miller resigned in June, citing family reasons.
Israel went ahead with the forced displacement of those in northern Gaza, making nearly one million Palestinians flee south. As the Palestinians fled their homes, Israel bombed the roads they were travelling on.
In a separate chain of emails, Christopher Le Mon, a deputy assistant secretary at the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL), recommended that Washington deny Israel "more than a dozen arms packages". Le Mon was concerned about specific Israeli police units, including the Yamam patrol unit.
Le Mon said in the email that there were “numerous reports” of Yamam’s involvement in "gross violations of human rights".
The State Department's DRL objected to 16 different arms packages for Israel, Reuters reported, but the Biden administration approved nearly all the shipments in any case.
In response to questions about the emails, the White House told Reuters, "The US has been leading international efforts to get humanitarian aid into Gaza” and “this is and will continue to be a top priority”.
Middle East Eye reached out to the White House, State Department, and Department of Defence for comment, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
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