Emails show early US concerns over Gaza offensive, risk of Israeli war crimes

Stroul was relaying an assessment by the International Committee of the Red Cross that had left her “chilled to the bone,” she wrote.

A photographer runs for cover as a smoke raises in the background following an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, Oct. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

As Israel pounded northern Gaza with air strikes last October and ordered the evacuation of more than a million Palestinians from the area, a senior Pentagon official delivered a blunt warning to the White House.

The mass evacuation would be a humanitarian disaster and could violate international law, leading to war crime charges against Israel, Dana Stroul, then the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, wrote in an October 13 email to senior aides to US presidentJoe Biden.