US Fails To Tackle Civilian Casualties In Gaza

The United States identified about 500 reports of Gaza civilians being harmed and killed by Israeli forces with US-supplied weapons but has failed to take action on any of them, according to The Washington Post and the Reuters news agency.

The incidents have been collected since October 7, 2023 by the US Department of State’s Civilian Harm Incident Response Guidance, a formal mechanism for tracking and assessing any reported misuse of US-origin weapons, the Post reported on Wednesday.

Among the cases submitted to the State Department, according to people familiar with the matter, are the January killing of six-year-old Hind Rajab and her family in their car, with pieces of a US-made 120mm tank round purportedly found at the scene.

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

The mechanism, established in August last year to be applied to all countries that receive US weapons, 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 US official familiar with the matter.

Very Difficult Work

The administration of President Joe Biden 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 spokesman 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, he added.

William D Hartung, a co-author of the Watson Institute report and an expert on the arms industry and the US military budget at the Quincy Institute, told the newspaper that “it’s almost impossible” that Israel is not violating US law “given the level of slaughter that’s going on, and the preponderance of US weapons”.

Oren Marmorstein, a spokesman for Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, declined to discuss the US inquiries or Washington’s efforts to limit civilian harm with the Post.

The Israeli military says it makes “significant efforts” to avoid civilian harm but has cited the presence of Hamas fighters among civilians as justification to carry out bombings on schools, hospitals, mosques and tent encampments.

Gaza’s Ministry of Health says the majority of the 43,163 people killed since October 7 last year have been women and children.

Al Jazeera/Ejiofor Ezeifeoma