WASHINGTON: US State Department officials have identified nearly 500 potential incidents of civilian harm during Israel’s military operations in Gaza involving US-furnished weapons, but have not taken further action on any of them, three sources, including a US official familiar with the matter, said this week.
The incidents — some of which might have violated international humanitarian law, according to the sources — have been recorded since Oct. 7, 2023, when the Gaza war started. They are being collected by the State Department’s Civilian Harm Incident Response Guidance, a formal mechanism for tracking and assessing any reported misuse of US-origin weapons.
State Department officials gathered the incidents from public and non-public sources, including media reporting, civil society groups and foreign government contacts.
The mechanism, which was established in August 2023 to be applied to all countries that receive US arms, has three stages: incident analysis, policy impact assessment, and coordinated department action, according to a December internal State Department cable reviewed by Reuters.
None of the Gaza cases had yet reached the third stage of action, said a former US official familiar with the matter. Options, the former official said, could range from working with Israel’s government to help mitigate harm, to suspending existing arms export licenses or withholding future approvals.
The Washington Post first reported the nearly 500 incidents on Wednesday.
The State Department declined to comment on this story. In August, deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said Washington was reviewing “very closely” reports of alleged violations of international law and listed the civilian harm process as one of the policies at the department’s disposal.
The administration of President Joe Biden has long said it is yet to definitively assess an incident in which Israel has violated international humanitarian law during its operation in Gaza.
John Ramming Chappell, advocacy and legal adviser at the Center for Civilians in Conflict, said the Biden administration “has consistently deferred to Israeli authorities and declined to do its own investigations.”
“The US government hasn’t done nearly enough to investigate how the Israeli military uses weapons made in the United States and paid for by US taxpayers,” he said.
Another US official told Reuters the US embassy in Jerusalem has raised a number of incidents with Israel under the guidance.
The process does not only look at potential violations of international law but at any incident where civilians are killed or injured and where US arms are implicated, and looks at whether this could have been avoided or reduced, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
A review of an incident can lead to a recommendation that a unit needs more training or different equipment, as well as more severe consequences, the official said.
Israel’s military conduct has come under increasing scrutiny as its forces have killed more than 43,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the enclave’s health authorities.
The latest episode of bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7, 2023, when Palestinian Hamas militants attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and abducting 250 others, according to Israeli tallies.
US tracking nearly 500 incidents of civilian harm during Gaza war
https://arab.news/zvyvj
US tracking nearly 500 incidents of civilian harm during Gaza war
- US embassy in Jerusalem has raised a number of incidents with Israel under the guidance
- Israel’s military conduct has come under increasing scrutiny as its forces have killed more than 43,000 Palestinians in Gaza
UN mission in Lebanon targeted 30 times in October
- Andrea Tenenti: ‘Peacekeepers performing their monitoring tasks, as well as our cameras, lighting and entire watchtowers, have been deliberately targeted by the IDF’
- Tenenti: ‘To be clear, the actions of both the IDF and Hezbollah are putting peacekeepers in danger’
UNITED NATIONS, United States: The UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon recorded more than 30 incidents this month resulting in property damage or injury to peacekeepers, about 20 of them from Israeli fire or action, a spokesman said Wednesday.
The UN peacekeeping force has been deployed in Lebanon since Israel’s 1978 invasion of the country. More recently it has been thrust into the front lines of the new war between Israel and Hezbollah, with Israel repeatedly calling on peacekeepers to abandon their positions.
Of the 30 incidents this month, “about 20 of those we could attribute to IDF fire or actions, with seven being clearly deliberate,” Andrea Tenenti, a spokesman for the force, known as UNIFIL, told a news conference held by video.
“What has been very concerning are incidents where peacekeepers performing their monitoring tasks, as well as our cameras, lighting and entire watchtowers, have been deliberately targeted by the IDF,” Tenenti said, referring to the Israeli military.
On Monday a rocket that was probably fired by Hezbollah or an affiliated group hit the headquarters of the UN mission in the Lebanese city of Naqoura, he said.
For about a dozen other incidents, the origin of fire could not be determined.
“To be clear, the actions of both the IDF and Hezbollah are putting peacekeepers in danger,” the spokesman added.
Lebanon PM says hopes for ceasefire with Israel in ‘coming hours or days’
- Hochstein was heading to Israel on Wednesday to discuss conditions for a ceasefire with Hezbollah, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s prime minister said US envoy Amos Hochstein had signalled during a phone call Wednesday that a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war was possible before US elections are held on November 5.
“The call today with Hochstein suggested to me that perhaps we could reach a ceasefire in the coming days, before the fifth” of November, Najib Mikati said in a televised interview with Lebanese broadcaster Al-Jadeed.
Hochstein was heading to Israel on Wednesday to discuss conditions for a ceasefire with Hezbollah, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.
Hezbollah’s new leader Naim Qassem on Wednesday said the group would agree to a ceasefire with Israel under acceptable terms, but added that a viable deal has yet to be presented.
“We are doing our best... to have a ceasefire within the coming hours or days,” Mikati told Al-Jadeed, adding that he was “cautiously optimistic.”
Mikati said Hezbollah is no longer linking a ceasefire in Lebanon to a truce in Gaza, however criticizing the group over the “late” reversal.
Previously, Hezbollah had repeatedly declared that it would only stop its attacks on Israel if a ceasefire was reached in Gaza.
But Qassem on Wednesday said the group would accept a ceasefire under conditions deemed “appropriate and suitable,” without any mention of the Palestinian territory.
Mikati said a ceasefire would be linked to the implementation of a United Nations resolution that ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 states that only the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers should be deployed in southern Lebanon, while demanding the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanese territory.
“The Lebanese army is ready to strengthen its presence in southern Lebanon” and ensure that the only weapons and military infrastructure in the area are those controlled by the state, Mikati said.
Israel wages deadly Gaza strikes as northern areas plead for help
- Fresh offensive has killed hundreds and helped choke aid supplies to their lowest level
CAIRO/GAZA: Israel pummeled the Gaza Strip with new bombardments that killed at least 20 people on Wednesday, Palestinian medics said, a day after one of the deadliest single strikes of the year-old war killed scores in the north of the enclave.
Eight of Wednesday’s victims were killed in a strike on the Salateen area of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza. The area is near where medics said at least 93 people were killed or missing on Tuesday in an Israeli strike Washington called “horrifying.”
The Israeli assault that has laid waste to the Gaza Strip and killed tens of thousands of people shows no signs of slowing as Israel wages a new war in Lebanon.
Northern Gaza, where Israel said in January it had dismantled militant group Hamas’ command structure, is currently the focus of the military’s assault. It sent tanks into Beit Lahiya and the neighboring towns of Beit Hanoun and Jabalia earlier this month to flush out Hamas militants who it said had regrouped in the area.
The new operation has killed hundreds of Palestinians, medical workers say, and has helped choke aid and food supplies to their lowest level since the beginning of the war.
Officials in Beit Lahiya issued a statement urging world powers and aid agencies to halt Israel’s attacks and bring in basic medical supplies, fuel and food, saying the latest military actions had left the area “without food, without water, without hospitals, without doctors.”
Dr. Eid Sabbah of Beit Lahiya’s Kamal Adwan hospital said that bodies and injured people remained trapped under rubble.
He said the destruction of hospitals and lack of medical supplies meant doctors and nurses mostly had no chance of saving people who came in with injuries from airstrikes and gunfire.
“Whoever is injured, just lies there on the ground and whoever is killed can’t be transported, except by mule-drawn cart,” he said.
Israel’s decision this week to ban the UN relief agency UNRWA from operating on its territory could have a disastrous impact on humanitarian efforts in Gaza, UN officials said.
Israel presses on with assaults on Gaza despite the killing this month of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, a mastermind of the Oct. 7 attacks whose death was a key aim of the war. Several Israeli soldiers have been killed this month in northern Gaza, the military said on Tuesday.
As families fled the Beit Lahiya area last week, parents wheeled children in prams and wooden carts and dragged suitcases through the mud. Israel earlier in October told residents of northern Gaza to leave their homes or face missile strikes.
Dalia Al-Kharawat, a mother-of-five from Jabalia, begged locals in Gaza City to let her stay and now sleeps in the open-air car park of a destroyed building with her children.
“When we need to sleep, we go here in the rubble, the sand, the broken glass. There is no place at the school shelters,” she said.
Israel has bombed schools where homeless families are staying on a number of occasions, according to Palestinian hospital workers in Gaza.
Lebanon security source says one dead in strike on Hezbollah van
- “A van belonging to Hezbollah was targeted in an Israeli strike on the Kahhale road and its driver killed,” the official said
BEIRUT: A Lebanese security official told AFP that an Israeli strike on a Hezbollah van carrying munitions near Beirut killed the driver on Wednesday.
“A van belonging to Hezbollah was targeted in an Israeli strike on the Kahhale road and its driver killed,” the official said, adding that the vehicle was carrying munitions.
The official requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
An AFP correspondent saw a vehicle on fire and said the Kahhale road, which links Beirut to Damascus, had been blocked in both directions.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) earlier reported an “enemy drone strike” on a vehicle.
An Israeli strike on a four-wheel-drive vehicle in nearby Qmatiyeh, a village in the Aley district, killed another two people, said the security official, who did not identify the casualties.
Last week, the NNA said an Israeli strike targeting a car on the same highway killed two people.
In August 2023, two people were killed in clashes between Hezbollah members and residents of the Christian town of Kahhale, after a truck carrying munitions for the group overturned on the highway.
The war has killed at least 1,754 people in Lebanon since September 23, according to an AFP tally of health ministry figures, though the real number is likely to be higher due to gaps in the data.
Lebanon’s only burn unit treats toddlers after Israeli strikes
- The unit is the only one across Lebanon equipped to deal with burns and its hallways echo with the screams of children
BEIRUT: Wrapped in gauze from her head to her tiny toes, toddler Ivana Skayki lies nearly motionless in a hospital bed much too big for her. For weeks, she has been treated for severe burns sustained in Israeli strikes on her hometown in southern Lebanon.
Skayki, who turns two next month, sustained burns to nearly 40 percent of her body, including half of her face, her chest and both upper limbs, according to Ziad Sleiman, plastic surgeon at the specialist burn unit in Beirut’s Geitaoui Hospital.
The unit is the only one across Lebanon equipped to deal with burns. Its hallways echo with the screams of children as anxious parents await news from doctors.
Ivana’s father Mohammad told Reuters his daughter was burned in Israeli strikes as they prepared to flee their hometown of Al-Aliyah on Sept. 23, the day that Israel dramatically ramped up its strikes on Lebanon.
More than 550 people were killed that day alone, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
“There was a hit, the house shook — everything was breaking, the windows, the roof, everything, the blast was in my house,” Skayki recalled. “I thought to myself, ‘this could be it, this could be the end.’“
Israel says it makes all possible efforts to avoid civilian casualties and accuses Hezbollah of deliberately basing its fighters in residential areas and using civilians as human shields. Hezbollah has denied the accusation.
The family managed to flee to the southern port city of Tyre, where Ivana got initial treatment. They moved again to another hospital, but with no department there for burns, Ivana only got partial treatment before they could reach Beirut.
Sleiman said Ivana had received skin-graft operations and could be released within days. She still has deep red marks on her face, where some of her skin is peeling.
The hospital has admitted eight children with third-degree burns to half their bodies. It has had to be selective compared to other patients, Sleiman said, because it is short of space.
Geitaoui Hospital’s burn unit has a typical capacity of nine beds, but has managed to increase to 25 with help from the health ministry to cope with the influx of patients, said the hospital’s medical director Naji Abi Rached.
Most patients stay for up to six weeks because of their critical condition.
“Sometimes the outcome is not positive, due to the extent of the burns,” Abi Rached said.
