The administration of the President of the United States of America (USA) Joseph Biden announced on Friday that Israel, when using American weapons during military operations in Gaza, may have violated international humanitarian law. However, the administration also said that due to the chaos of the war in Gaza, it could not verify specific examples of situations where the use of these weapons may have violated international law, so it did not present a definitive assessment of the issue, Voice of America reports.
Seemingly contradictory assessments were presented in the State Department's report to Congress, which is mandated by the new National Security Memorandum (NSM), which Biden released in early February.
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The memorandum asks countries that receive US military aid to provide "credible and reliable" assurances that they respect humanitarian law.
The existence of "reasonable" evidence that a US partner violated international law during the war in Gaza, mentioned in a summary of the report submitted to Congress on Friday, represents the strongest such statement so far by a Biden administration official.
However, the U.S. failure to directly link specific U.S. weapons to individual airstrikes carried out by Israeli soldiers in Gaza could give the administration room to maneuver in any future decision on whether to limit shipments of offensive weapons to Israel.
The first assessment of its kind, which was pushed for by Democrats in Congress, came after seven months of airstrikes, ground clashes and aid restrictions that have killed nearly 35.000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.
"Given that Israel relies heavily on US-made defense products, it is reasonable to estimate that after October 7, the Israeli security forces used the defense products referred to in the NSM-20 in situations that are inconsistent with Israel's obligations under the international humanitarian law, or with the established practice of mitigating civilian suffering," the State Department said in the report.
"Israel did not share complete information to verify whether US defense items were used in actions alleged to violate international humanitarian law in Gaza, the West Bank or East Jerusalem during the period covered by the report," the document submitted to Congress said. .
Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen said the administration "avoided all the hard questions" and avoided carefully considering whether Israel's behavior meant cutting off military aid to the country.
"The report contradicts itself because it concludes that there are reasonable grounds to believe that there was a violation of international law, but at the same time they say that they have not found examples of Israel not complying with the rules," Van Hollen told reporters.
The report was also criticized by the independent working group for the application of the National Security Memorandum NSM-20 to Israel.
"The administration's report is at best incomplete, and at worst - deliberately misleading in order to defend acts and conduct that likely violated international humanitarian law and may amount to war crimes. Once again, the Biden administration faced the facts - and then decided to pull back the curtain."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu previously said the Israelis were ready to fight "toe-to-toe", dismissing the US president's warning that arms shipments could be halted because of the planned operation in Gaza.
Israel has long threatened to move on the Rafah, which it claims is home to thousands of Hamas fighters and possibly dozens of hostages they captured in the Oct. 7 attack among more than a million Palestinians displaced by the war. The operation began this Sunday with the evacuation of some civilians, followed by limited military incursions.
The Biden administration said it could not support a major invasion of Rafah in the absence of what it would consider a credible plan to protect non-combatants. Israel, on the other hand, claims that victory in the seven-month conflict is impossible without the capture of Rafah.
Netanyahu's government remained silent following reports that Washington was holding back a shipment of certain types of bombs - until Biden publicly announced the move on Wednesday, saying it was part of a US warning to Israelis not to "go to Rafah".
"If we have to be alone, we will be alone," Netanyahu said without referring specifically to the US announcement.
"If we have to, we will fight with our nails," he said in a video statement. "But we have much more than nails and with that strength of spirit, with God's help, together we will win".
Netanyahu, however, said in an interview with American television that he hopes he and Biden can overcome their differences over the war in Gaza.
"We often had our agreements, but we also had mutual disagreements. We managed to overcome them," Netanyahu said on the "Dr. Phil Primetime" show.
"I hope we can overcome them now, but we will do what we have to do to protect our country," he said.
The conservative prime minister's comments in a video statement were echoed by two other voting members of his war cabinet - Defense Minister Joav Galan and former Defense Minister Beni Gantz - although no one explicitly said a deeper cleanup of Rafa would be ordered.
"I turn to Israel's enemies as well as our best friends and say – the State of Israel cannot submit," Galan said in a speech. "We will be strong, we will achieve our goals - we will hit Hamas, we will hit (Lebanese) Hezbollah and we will achieve security".
Gantz expressed gratitude for what the Israeli military described as US support and an unprecedented supply of wartime supplies.
"Israel has a duty, in terms of national security and morality, to continue fighting to return its hostages and end the Hamas threat to southern Israel," he said on Platform X. "And the United States has a moral and strategic duty to expand the tools (sent) to Israel that are necessary for this mission."
In parallel with the public dispute, the United States is trying to lead negotiations between Israel and Hamas with the mediation of Egypt and Qatar that would release some hostages.
Negotiations have stalled on Hamas' demand to end the war in Gaza, while Israel is ready to enter only a ceasefire. Negotiators on Thursday ended the latest meetings in Cairo without an agreement, and Israel said it would continue with the planned Rafah operation.
The chief spokesman for the Israeli army, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, told a briefing that the armed forces had enough ammunition for Rafah "and other operations that are planned".
USA: The Rafah offensive will strengthen, not weaken, Hamas
The United States again warned Israel on Thursday not to expand its limited operation into an all-out attack on Rafah, this time not only for long-term humanitarian reasons but also for strategic calculations.
"Our view is that Rafah operations, certainly any kind of large ground Rafah operation, would actually strengthen Hamas's position at the negotiating table, not Israel's," National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Thursday.
Kirby said Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader believed to be hiding in Gaza's network of tunnels, would have "less incentive to want to come to the negotiating table" if there were more mass civilian casualties in Rafah.
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