Amnesty International says Biden must halt arms transfers to Israel

A new assessment from Amnesty International asserts that Israel has used U.S.-supplied weapons against Palestinian civilians in alleged violations of international law, a finding certain to inflame the heated debate about whether the United States should curtail support to its closest Middle Eastern ally.

The advocacy group’s findings, following similar conclusions from an independent panel of experts and recent analysis from other civil society groups, were set to be disclosed later Monday as the Biden administration, under mounting scrutiny, faces a looming deadline for determining whether Israel has abided by the laws of war.

The Amnesty International report provides an accounting of incidents in which civilians have allegedly been injured or killed in Israel’s campaign against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip and in other instances. It says Israel’s military has used U.S.-manufactured weapons, including Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) and Small Diameter Bombs (SDBs), to conduct unlawful attacks or kill civilians, which Amnesty says should be investigated as potential war crimes.

The incidents “underscore the overall pattern of unlawful attacks by Israeli forces and the extremely high risk that U.S.-made weapons and other materials and services provided to the Israeli government are being used in violation of international law,” the group said in its report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post ahead of its release.

“The United States government must immediately suspend the transfer of all weapons and other articles to the Israeli government so long as compliance with international humanitarian and human rights law is not demonstrated,” it said.

A senior Israeli government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Israel complies with the laws of armed conflict and that Hamas, on the other hand, used civilian casualties as a “propaganda tool.”

“As Israel seeks to minimize civilian casualties because it is the right thing to do, and it is the most effective strategy in countering terrorism, Hamas seeks to maximize civilian casualties by targeting Israeli civilians while using Palestinian civilians and Israeli hostages as human shields,” the official said.

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The report also cites other instances where the weapons were not identified or were not of U.S. origin.

The United States has long been Israel’s primary military backer, providing more than $3 billion a year in security aid. The two countries’ partnership has come under heightened scrutiny since Israel began its offensive against Hamas following the militants’ attacks on Oct. 7, which killed about 1,200 people. Palestinian authorities say that more than 34,000 people, most of them women and children, have been killed in the ensuing Israeli airstrikes and ground operations.

The White House, in response to pressure over the war in Gaza, said in February it would require countries that are engaged in conflict and receive U.S. weapons to provide the United States assurances that they will use them in compliance with international law and facilitate the delivery of American aid.

Under that requirement, National Security Memorandum-20, the administration must submit a report to Congress by May 8 about whether Israel has met those standards as it has attested.

Since early in the conflict, the Biden administration has faulted the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for failing to sufficiently protect civilians and enable the entry of aid. More recently, President Biden hinted that the U.S. government could withhold support if Israel plunges ahead with an expected offensive in the southern city of Rafah — even though officials have consistently said they have not found Israel to be in violation of international law.

Officials say that more aid has entered Gaza in recent weeks, after Biden issued his ultimatum to Netanyahu.

The congressional reporting deadline comes as the Biden administration deliberates about whether to place an Israeli military unit on a list of foreign entities banned from receiving U.S. security aid because of allegations of “gross violations” of human rights — another point of friction in U.S.-Israeli ties.

As Biden accelerates his political campaign for a second term in the White House, he faces criticism from within the Democratic Party and among young voters over his support for Israel. But a possible suspension of U.S. aid to any element of Israel’s military has also been met with criticism from Republicans.

The incidents cited by Amnesty include strikes in December and January on residential buildings in Rafah that the organization said employed U.S.-manufactured arms and killed at least 95 people, including more than 40 children. Amnesty later visited the sites of those attacks to interview survivors and analyze weapons fragments.

Amnesty also accuses the Israeli government of violating “best practices” for protecting civilians in wartime, saying its military issues unrealistic evacuation orders, and citing what it says is the arbitrary detention and torture of Palestinians in the West Bank. Its report also finds that the Israeli government is in violation of a separate U.S. law requiring nations that receive U.S. defense items to cooperate with the delivery of U.S. humanitarian aid.

The group’s conclusions mirror those of an April 18 report from a group of independent experts, including law scholars and former U.S. officials, which found “systematic disregard for fundamental principles of international law, including recurrent attacks launched despite foreseeably disproportionate harm to civilians and civilian objects.”

The experts include Josh Paul, a former State Department employee who resigned last fall over the administration’s stance on the Gaza conflict, and Noura Erakat, a professor at Rutgers University.

The incidents cited by that task force, mostly drawn from reporting by other groups and media publications, include October and December strikes that the report said killed more than 100 people.

Paul, Erakat and the other experts deemed those incidents “just the most easily identifiable among a clear pattern of violations of international law, failures to apply civilian harm mitigation best practices, and restrictions of humanitarian assistance, by the government of Israel and the [Israel Defense Forces], often utilizing U.S.-provided arms.”

In March, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam released their determination related to the National Security Memo requirements, saying Israeli assurances of compliance were not credible. That report stated that Israel had committed war crimes.

Amnesty conducted field assessments in some of the incidents included in its assessment, which it said were conducted at great risk. Because watchdog groups and journalists are often unable to conduct assessments in person, the group urged the Biden administration to “accept cases where there is a reasonable presumption that U.S.-origin munitions and other articles were involved.”

“The burden to prove to the contrary should shift to the U.S. government,” it said.