Reuters: As early as October 2023, US officials were concerned about Israel's offensive on Gaza

Immediately after the start of the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip, in October of last year, among the officials of the US President Joseph Biden's administration, there was concern that this military operation could lead to a violation of international law and to the accusation of Israel for war crimes, according to emails that have been accessed. had the Reuters agency.

The emails, the content of which was published by Reuters, were created immediately after the start of Israel's military operations in the Gaza Strip, in retaliation for the Palestinian Hamas attack on the south of Israel on October 7, 2023, in which 1.200 people were killed and more than 250 were kidnapped.

After Israel began bombing the northern part of the Gaza Strip, from where Hamas extremists invaded the south of Israel, senior Pentagon official Dana Straul, then the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, sent the White House an email with a clear warning.

In an Oct. 13 email to Bayden's advisers, Straul said the Israeli-ordered evacuation of more than a million Palestinians would be a humanitarian disaster and could lead to violations of international law and expose Israel to war crimes charges.

Straul actually conveyed the assessment of the International Committee of the Red Cross to Biden's advisers, which, as she stated in the email, "made her blood run."

Ahead of the first anniversary of the start of the Gaza war, which threatens to escalate into a wider war in the Middle East, Dana Straul's email and other previously undisclosed correspondence show the Biden administration's efforts to balance internal concerns over the mounting death toll in Gaza with its public support for the authorities. Israel, according to Reuters.

Israel's war against Hamas, which has killed more than 40.000 people in Gaza, has sparked mass protests in the US led by Arab-Americans and Muslim activists.

Reuters had access to three email exchanges between senior Biden administration officials from October 11 to 14. Those emails reveal that even then there was concern in the State Department and the Pentagon that the growing number of casualties in Gaza could threaten American ties with the Arab world.

The emails also show pressure within the Biden administration to change the messages it sends so that, in addition to expressing solidarity with Israel, they also include sympathy for the Palestinians and the need to allow additional humanitarian aid to be sent to Gaza.

Senior officials in the Biden administration express their belief that the White House's pressure on the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the early days of the war was significant and prevented a major disaster.

In private talks, the White House asked Israel to delay a ground offensive on the Gaza Strip to give aid groups more time to prepare aid for the displaced and to give Israel more time to reach a deal with Hamas, administration officials told reporters at briefings at the time. .

However, according to three senior US officials involved in the decision-making process, Washington has been slow to respond to the suffering of the Palestinians. And while Israel's ground invasion of Gaza was then delayed by about ten days, three officials say the delay was more the result of operational preparations by Israeli forces than American pressure.

The correspondence, which began on the fifth day of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, indicates both the haste in the Biden administration to warn the White House of the impending crisis, but also the initial resistance of the White House to the idea of ​​a ceasefire in the first, chaotic days of the war in Gaza.

When Israel began shelling hospitals, schools and mosques in Gaza, one of the State Department's top diplomats, Bill Russo, warned senior officials in an email that Washington was "losing credibility with the Arabic-speaking public" by not addressing the humanitarian crisis directly. On that day, officials in Gaza reported the deaths of 1.200 people.

While Israel justified the strikes, claiming that Hamas was using civilian facilities for military purposes, Russo wrote that American diplomats in the Middle East are following what the Arab media are writing, and that they are accusing Israel of "genocide" and Washington of complicity in war crimes.

"The lack of an American response to the humanitarian situation of the Palestinians is not only ineffective and counterproductive, but we are now accused of complicity in potential war crimes by remaining silent on Israel's actions against civilians," wrote Russo, who called for that to change and warned that the reputation of the US could otherwise "suffer damage in the region in the coming years".

Rousseau resigned from the government in March of this year, citing private reasons. Russo's letter was sent to the White House by the State Department's top diplomat, Barbara Leaf, warning of the risk to US relations with its "otherwise robust" Arab partners.

One of the recipients of her letter, Biden's Middle East adviser Brett McGurk, wrote back that if her question was actually about whether the administration would call for a ceasefire, the answer was "No." However, he added that Washington "100 percent" supports the establishment of humanitarian corridors and the protection of civilians.

Mac Gark and Leaf did not want to comment to Reuters about the emails, and neither did Russo.

Not even two days after Russo's letter, the US public position remained mostly unchanged, and Washington continued to publicly support Israel's right to defend itself and plans to provide Jerusalem with military aid.