US tracking nearly 500 incidents of civilian harm in Israel
31/10/2024 6:02
U.S. State Department
officials have identified nearly 500 potential incidents of
civilian harm during Israel's military operations in Gaza
involving U.S.-furnished weapons, but have not taken further
action on any of them, three sources, including a U.S. official
familiar with the matter, said this week.
The incidents - some of which might have violated
international humanitarian law, according to the sources - have
been recorded since Oct. 7, 2023, when the Gaza war started.
They are being collected by the State Department's Civilian Harm
Incident Response Guidance, a formal mechanism for tracking and
assessing any reported misuse of U.S.-origin weapons.
State Department officials gathered the incidents from
public and non-public sources, including media reporting, civil
society groups and foreign government contacts.
The mechanism, which was established in August 2023 to be
applied to all countries that receive U.S. arms, has three
stages: incident analysis, policy impact assessment, and
coordinated department action, according to a December internal
State Department cable reviewed by Reuters.
None of the Gaza cases had yet reached the third stage of
action, said a former U.S. official familiar with the matter.
Options, the former official said, could range from working with
Israel's government to help mitigate harm, to suspending
existing arms export licenses or withholding future approvals.
The Washington Post first reported the nearly 500 incidents
on Wednesday.
The Biden administration has said it is reasonable to
assess that Israel has breached international law in the
conflict, but assessing individual incidents was "very difficult
work," State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told
reporters on Wednesday.
"We are conducting those investigations, and we are
conducting them thoroughly, and we are conducting them
aggressively, but we want to get to the right answer, and it's
important that we not jump to a pre-ordained result, and that we
not skip any of the work," Miller said, adding that Washington
consistently raises concerns over civilian harm with Israel.
The administration of President Joe Biden has long said
it is yet to definitively assess an incident in which Israel has
violated international humanitarian law during its operation in
Gaza.
John Ramming Chappell, advocacy and legal adviser at the
Center for Civilians in Conflict, said the Biden administration
"has consistently deferred to Israeli authorities and declined
to do its own investigations."
"The U.S. government hasn't done nearly enough to
investigate how the Israeli military uses weapons made in the
United States and paid for by U.S. taxpayers," he said.
The civilian harm process does not only look at potential
violations of international law but at any incident where
civilians are killed or injured and where U.S. arms are
implicated, and looks at whether this could have been avoided or
reduced, said one U.S. official, who spoke on condition of
anonymity.
A review of an incident can lead to a recommendation that a
unit needs more training or different equipment, as well as more
severe consequences, the official said.
Israel's military conduct has come under increasing scrutiny
as its forces have killed more than 43,000 Palestinians in Gaza,
according to the enclave's health authorities.
The latest episode of bloodshed in the decades-old
Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7, 2023, when
Palestinian Hamas militants attacked southern Israel, killing
1,200 people and abducting 250 others, according to Israeli
tallies.
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