ISRAEL’s devastating offensive in Gaza — and the United States’ support for it — will “haunt” outgoing Secretary of State Antony Blinken for the rest of his life, says a former diplomat, who quit in protest over the war last year.
Hala Rharrit told Al Jazeera in a phone interview that the administration of President Joe Biden is skirting the US’s own regulations by continuing to arm Israel despite well-documented abuses in Gaza.
“They are willfully — and I don’t say that word lightly, willfully — violating and evading US law,” said Rharrit, who resigned from the US State Department in April.
“When I became a diplomat, I swore an oath to defend the Constitution. They are circumventing the process to continue the flow of arms, knowing how catastrophic that is. For me, it’s really unforgivable, and it is criminal.”
There are several US laws that prohibit weapon transfers to human rights abusers, including a ban on security assistance to countries that block Washington-backed humanitarian aid.
The Leahy Law also restricts US aid to military units that are credibly accused of gross human rights violations, such as extrajudicial killings, torture and rape.
Moreover, the Biden administration has adopted a policy, dubbed National Security Memorandum 20, requiring allies that receive US weapons to provide credible assurances that they are not using the arms in violation of international humanitarian law.
Despite these safeguards, the US has continued to supply Israel — a country that leading rights groups say is committing genocide in Gaza — with billions of dollars in weapons.
Israel has killed at least 46,876 people in Gaza. It has also imposed a suffocating siege on the territory that sparked a deadly, man-made hunger crisis.
Last year, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, on charges of war crimes, including using “starvation as a method of warfare”.
Yet, Blinken has certified to Congress that Israel is not blocking humanitarian assistance to Gaza — an assessment that aid groups have rejected.
Blinken’s State Department has also been accused of failing to act on allegations of abuse by Israeli soldiers under the Leahy Law, prompting a recent lawsuit against the Biden administration, led by Palestinians and Palestinian Americans.
