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Photo by Hala Rharrit

Hala Rharrit was a veteran U.S. diplomat who had always operated in the corridors of power, not the limelight, when she opted for a change two years ago to become one of the faces of U.S. diplomacy for Arab media.

“I thought it would be quite thrilling,” Rharrit explained in one of her first interviews after resigning last week from her 18-year career at the State Department because, she said, she could not defend the Biden administration’s Gaza policy. “I did not anticipate this ending at all.”

Nearly seven months into the administration’s unstinting support for Israel in its war against <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/israel-hamas-war/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Hamas</a>, Rharrit became the first career diplomat to resign in protest of what she called a policy that will set back Washington’s interests in the Arab world for a generation. She told The Washington Post she felt the continued flow of U.S. arms to Israel was enabling the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and inflaming anger toward Washington in the Arab world. Inside the State Department, she said, diplomats are afraid to express viewpoints contrary to official policy, unlike most other issues during her career, where robust discussion was the norm.

The State Department declined to comment on the specifics of her resignation, citing a personnel matter. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said he welcomes conflicting views and reads the cables that come through the department’s official dissent channel. He has held multiple town halls with diplomats in an attempt to open the floor to differing opinions, a spokesman said.

The prosecutor of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/29/icc-israel-warrants-gaza/" target=_blank>International Criminal Court</a> said he was seeking <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/20/icc-arrest-warrants-netanyahu-sinwar-hamas-leaders/" target=_blank>arrest warrants for senior officials in the Israel-Gaza conflict</a>, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader Yehiya Sinwar, on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Rharrit’s repudiation of President Biden’s handling of the crisis underscores how it has so sharply divided Washington. Even centrist Democrats have grown critical of Israel’s treatment of civilians in Gaza and discussed <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/04/13/democrats-military-aid-israel/" target=_blank>cutting off military aid</a> if Israeli behavior does not change. University campuses across the country have been <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/04/30/columbia-university-protests-palestine-news/" target=_blank>seized by protests</a>. And though <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/04/29/blinken-israel-gaza-postwar-plan/" target=_blank>Blinken is in the Middle East</a> seeking to broker a cease-fire and increase the flow of humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory, Israeli leaders have declared they plan to invade the southern city of Rafah no matter what — a decision Biden and other top officials fear could be disastrous.

It has been a lonely journey for Rharrit, who said many of her former colleagues are fearful of being targeted or disciplined by the State Department for expressing views that are contrary to U.S. policy. The Biden administration has directed a continuous stream of weaponry to Israel even as senior U.S. officials have condemned strikes that have killed aid workers, children and other civilians. More than 34,000 Gazans have died during the war, according to local health authorities.

Only two other State Department employees have resigned in protest of the administration’s policy: <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/10/18/state-department-josh-paul-resignation-israel/" target=_blank>Josh Paul</a>, a civil servant who worked on foreign military aid, and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/03/27/gaza-state-department-resignation-dissent/" target=_blank>Annelle Sheline</a>, who had worked for a year as a foreign affairs officer in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. Both lived in Washington, unlike Rharrit.

“I believe in the power to change things from within. I believe in the force of good through diplomacy. I still want to believe in it,” said Rharrit, who until last week was one of the State Department’s Arabic-language spokespeople based in Dubai. “But at the end of the day, it was abundantly clear to me through so many conversations that I’ve had that no one within the department, perhaps only the secretary, but no career Foreign Service officer could really effect any change.”

Rharrit, who grew up in Nevada and California and majored in international affairs and Middle Eastern studies at George Washington University, joined the State Department straight out of graduate school at Georgetown. “I wanted to help my country. I definitely wanted to try to strengthen relations between other nations and the United States,” she said.

Over her career, she worked on counterterrorism financing in Qatar, violent extremism in South Africa and as a political officer in Yemen, among other postings.

But starting in October, Rharrit said that she had refused to give Arab media interviews about Gaza because she felt that the official talking points would inflame the situation, not cool it.

The talking points “were provocative,” she said. “They oftentimes completely ignored Palestinians. Early on, it was very, very heavy on ‘Israel has a right to defend itself.’ Yes, Israel has a right to defend itself, but there was no mention of the plight of the Palestinians. I, in good conscience, could not go on Arab television with those talking points. All that that would have done is have caused someone to want to throw their shoe at the TV, want to burn an American flag or, worse, throw a rocket at our troops.”

“I said, ‘I will not be the reason why someone hates America more,’” she said.

Rharrit said she feared that the children who have been orphaned by the war might eventually “pick up a gun and seek revenge. We’re promoting a generational cycle of revenge that is not making Israelis any safer,” she said.

Instead of giving interviews about Gaza policy, Rharrit said she focused on other aspects of her job, including monitoring Arabic-language media to report internally about their coverage of their conflict and U.S. policy.

“I was seeing on a daily basis the images that were going viral in the Arab world of all of the dead children,” she said. “How can it not get to you as a human being, as a mother? And it was devastating to know that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/04/29/amnesty-international-us-weapons-israel-gaza/" target=_blank>it was our bombs</a> that were killing those children, most likely. And more devastating to know that despite all of their deaths, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/04/04/world-central-kitchen-us-weapons-israel/" target=_blank>we’re still sending more arms</a> because somehow we think that that’s the solution. It’s insane. Diplomacy, not arms, is what we need.”

Evelyn Hockstein

Within the State Department, expressing concerns about policy hasn’t been easy, she said. Rharrit said that she had never before witnessed such “fear and discomfort” among diplomats.

“People are scared to talk to each other. People don’t know how other people feel. So they try to assess, you know, how are you feeling? People are scared to mention Gaza at work. They just want to pretend it’s not happening,” she said.

And she said she felt that colleagues treated her differently because of her Arab American background.

“Which really, quite frankly, angered me to my core. Because I’m an American diplomat. Full stop,” she said, adding that her Moroccan heritage had nothing to do with her recommendations as a U.S. policymaker.

“You shouldn’t have to be any hyphenated American to be impacted by what’s happening in Gaza,” Rharrit said.

Some contrarian views have bubbled up inside the administration. Multiple cables have been filed in the State Department’s dissent channel, a route that is supposed to offer diplomats a way to register objections to official policy that will protect them from professional reprisal. Blinken has met with some and said he welcomes a diversity of views. And staffers at the U.S. Administration for International Development <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/01/31/samantha-power-usaid-confronted-gaza/" target=_blank>have pressed Administrator Samantha Power</a> — a renowned scholar of genocide — to do more to shift U.S. policy.

Asked last week about Rharrit’s resignation, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said that “as it relates to this personnel matter, I’m not going to speak to the specifics.”

But, he said, “you’ve heard us talk about the dissent channel. That option, that channel continues to be in place. The secretary reads every single one of those dissent channel cables and dissenting viewpoints from across the administration. We continue to welcome them, and we think that it helps lead to stronger, more robust policymaking.”

Rharrit said she felt the dissent channel was mostly for show and that it was not a meaningful way to shift policy.

“People feared retribution,” she said. “‘What would this do to my career? How are people going to react?’ And that’s something that’s been very unusual, because throughout my 18 year career, no matter who the president was, no matter what the policy was, there were always robust internal conversations about policy, about what we’re doing right, about what we’re doing wrong. But there’s been this strange chilling effect with this conflict.”

Member of the "Pegasus Project" team that won a George Polk Award, 2021.

Yale University, BA in History

Deep Springs College

Michael Birnbaum is a national security reporter for The Washington Post, covering the State Department and diplomacy. He previously served more than a decade in Europe as The Post’s bureau chief in Brussels, Moscow and Berlin, reporting from more than 40 countries, and he covered climate and security from Washington. He joined The Post in 2008.

Michael Birnbaum

Hala Rharrit explains why she quit Biden administration over Gaza war

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U.S. diplomat explains why she quit Biden administration over Gaza war

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