US hasn’t pursued hundreds of incidents of civilian harm in Gaza

Officials at the US State Department have identified almost 500 incidents of civilian harm by Israel in Gaza involving US weapons, but have not taken any further action, according to the Arab News via Reuters on October 30th.

The information comes from three sources, including a US official familiar with the matter, and was revealed this week. The sources say some of the incidents may have violated international humanitarian law.

They are being collected by the State Department’s Civilian Harm Incident Response Guidance, a formal mechanism for tracking and assessing reported misuses of weapons of US-origin.

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Incidents are gathered from both public and non-public sources, such as media reporting, civil society groups and contacts in foreign government.

It was established in August 2023 to be applied to all countries receiving US arms, and has three stages – incident analysis, policy impact assessment, and coordinated department action, according to a December internal State Department cable reviewed by Reuters.

A US official familiar with the matter says none of the Gaza cases have reached the third stage. Options could range from working with Israel to stop re-occurrence to suspending existing arms export licenses or withholding future approvals.

The 500 incidents were first reported by the Washington Post on October 30th.

State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said in August that Washington was “very closely” looking into reports of alleged violations of international law and listed the civilian harm process as a policy at the department’s disposal.

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Advocacy and legal adviser at the Center for Civilians in Conflict John Ramming Chappell said the Biden administration “has consistently deferred to Israeli authorities and declined to do its own investigations.” “The US government hasn’t done nearly enough to investigate how the Israeli military uses weapons made in the United States and paid for by US taxpayers,” he added.

Reuters was told by a separate US official that the US embassy in Jerusalem has raised a number of incidents with Israel under the guidance. The process looks not just at potential violations of international law but any incident her civilians are killed or injured and where US arms are implicated, and tries to see whether this could have been avoided or reduced, added the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The official said 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.

Reuters, Washington Post

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