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.

Fri, 04 Oct, 2024 - 11:48

Reuters

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.

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

As the Gaza war nears its first anniversary and the Middle East teeters on the brink of a wider war, Stroul’s email and other previously unreported communications show the Biden administration’s struggle to balance internal concerns over rising deaths in Gaza with its public support for Jerusalem following the Hamas attack on southern Israel.

Reuters reviewed three sets of email exchanges between senior US administration officials, dated October 11 to 14, just days into the crisis.

The fighting has led to more than 40,000 deaths in Gaza and spurred US protests led by Arab-Americans and Muslim activists.

The emails, which haven’t been reported before, reveal alarm early on in the State Department and Pentagon that a rising death toll in Gaza could violate international law and jeopardize US ties in the Arab world.

The messages also show internal pressure in the Biden administration to shift its messaging from showing solidarity with Israel to including sympathy for Palestinians and the need to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Top Biden administration officials say they believe White House pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in those early days made a difference, preventing an even worse disaster.

In private talks, the White House asked Israel to delay its ground offensive to give more time for aid groups to prepare help for displaced people and to give Israel more time to strike a deal with Hamas, administration officials told reporters in background briefings at the time.

n response to questions about the emails, the White House said, "The US has been leading international efforts to get humanitarian aid into Gaza” and “this is and will continue to be a top priority.”

It added that before US “engagement, there was no food, water, or medicine getting into Gaza.”