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US military announces first aid shipment into Gaza via temporary maritime corridor, Gaza Strip - 17 May 2024

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The Biden administration postponed delivery of a report due to Congress on Wednesday on whether Israel’s use of U.S.-supplied military equipment in Gaza has violated U.S. or international humanitarian law, saying that a written assessment would be provided “in the very near future.”

“We have taken this incredibly seriously and we will have it … in the coming days,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.

The delay came as Israeli forces continued their incursion into Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, despite a warning from <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/joe-biden-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">President Biden</a> that such an operation could affect U.S. policy toward the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel has dropped leaflets urging 100,000 civilians to evacuate, a fraction of the more than 1.5 million Palestinian civilians who have sought refuge there from the war.

In <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/08/politics/joe-biden-interview-cnntv/index.html" target=_blank>an interview</a> Wednesday with CNN, Biden said he would halt further shipments of offensive weapons if Israel launched a major Rafah invasion. “Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs,” he said. “I made it clear that if they go into Rafah. ... I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically ... to deal with the cities.”

Now in its second day, what U.S. officials said Israel has described as a “limited” military operation has closed off the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza through its two main entry points — the Rafah crossing from Egypt and nearby Kerem Shalom from Israel, which Israeli authorities said was reopened Wednesday but aid groups said was still not functioning.

The administration has already paused <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/05/07/biden-delays-weapons-israel-rafah/" target=_blank>at least one weapons delivery to Israel</a> because of concerns about civilian casualties. An estimated 34,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli air and ground operations, according to Gaza health authorities, since the war began Oct. 7 when <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/israel-hamas-war/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Hamas</a> attacked Israel, leaving about 1,200 dead and taking more than 250 hostages into Gaza.

In congressional testimony Wednesday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed that delivery of “one shipment of high payload munitions” was being at least temporarily withheld, while others were being considered.

“We are currently reviewing some near-term security assistance shipments in the context of the unfolding events in Rafah,” Austin told the defense subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “We have not made any final decisions on this yet.”

But the administration has been “very clear that … Israel has to do more to protect the civilians in the battle space,” Austin said. The United States, he said, wanted “a plan to move those civilians out … before executing any kind of ground combat operation.”

Israel ordered the civilian evacuation hours before it began the ongoing Rafah operation, which included the taking of the Rafah crossing. Although U.S. officials said Israel had assured the administration that the incursion was limited in both scope and duration, and not a “major military operation,” Miller said at the State Department on Wednesday that even the limited evacuation “is not something we support.”

“We made clear that we don’t want to see that happen,” he said. “We don’t think there is sufficient place for those people to go.”

Austin’s public confirmation of the shipment holdup, which had circulated for days in the media, brought immediate criticism from some quarters of a Congress deeply divided between support for Israel at all costs, and demands that the administration withhold backing.

<a href="https://www.speaker.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/SMJ-MM-5.8.24-Letter.pdf" target=_blank>In a letter to Biden on Wednesday</a>, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said that the shipment pause “call[s] into question” his pledge of an “ironclad” commitment to Israeli security that helped secure the recent passage of billions of dollars in new military aid to both Ukraine and Israel. “Daylight between the United States and Israel at this dangerous time risks emboldening Israel’s enemies and undermining the trust that other allies and partners have in the United States,” they wrote.

Calling for assistance to both Ukraine and Israel to be “expedited to the fullest extent possible,” Johnson and McConnell said they wanted the delayed written assessment of Israel, along with “whether any other shipments will be … paused,” by the end of this week.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said in a statement that he encourages the administration “to continue to be wary of transferring weapons that could be used in offensive military actions that result in significant civilian casualties.”

The weapons pause followed a flurry of closed-door conversations between U.S. and Israeli officials in recent days, according to two diplomats who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive exchanges. Israel expressed “deep frustration” at the delay of armaments, one of the diplomats said, and anger over the fact that it became public.

Israeli officials argued strenuously against the move, the diplomat said, complaining that it would jeopardize ongoing negotiations over a temporary cease-fire and hostage-release agreement “at a critical moment.” U.S. officials disagreed that it would impede the negotiations and repeated Wednesday that Israel and Hamas can and should reach common ground on a deal put on the table by U.S., Qatari and Egyptian mediators.

The failure of the administration to meet its own deadline for providing Congress with an assessment of Israel’s war conduct was unrelated to the Rafah incursion, Miller said, or to what he called the “unacceptable” sudden stop in humanitarian aid.

“The delay is not related to anything that has happened this week,” he said. “The delay is just related to the fact that we are trying to put the finishing touches” on the report.

The report will assess Israel’s assurances that it is abiding by U.S. and international law as directed by a national security memorandum issued by Biden on Feb. 8. Adding new reporting and transparency requirements to existing laws on U.S. weapons transfers, it says that all countries receiving U.S. military assistance must provide “credible and reliable” assurances that its use of that equipment is within legal bounds and they have not impeded any humanitarian assistance.

The State and Defense departments are tasked with assessing those assurances in reports to both Congress and the president. Any recipient country found in violation risks losing U.S. arms supplies.

While the deadline for assessing most of the nearly 80 countries that receive U.S. military equipment falls later this year, seven that were deemed to be in “active combat” zones — Ukraine, Nigeria, Israel, Somalia, Iraq, Colombia and Kenya — were given a shorter time limit that was reached Wednesday. Most attention has focused on Israel.

After receiving the requisite assurances from the seven countries in late March, State and Defense, U.S. embassies, and the National Security Council have had 45 days to gather what one official called “relevant” information — including voluminous reports of alleged Israeli violations from human rights and humanitarian organizations.

That information now resides on the seventh floor of the State Department, in the offices of Secretary of State Antony Blinken. He will make the final assessment, in consultation with Austin, as to whether actions using U.S. military equipment or services have occurred “in a manner not consistent” with U.S. and international law, according to the memorandum.

The report, which one U.S. official said may bunch the seven countries together in one document, is to include recommendations, if appropriate, for “next steps to be taken to assess and remediate the situation. Such remediation could include actions from refreshing the assurances to suspending any further transfers” of weapons.

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Karen DeYoung is associate editor and senior national security correspondent for The Post. In more than three decades at the paper, she has served as bureau chief in Latin America and in London and as correspondent covering the White House, U.S. foreign policy and the intelligence community. 

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