LONDON: Amid a wave of resignations at the US State Department, Lily Greenberg-Kohl recently became the latest senior Biden administration official to quit in protest over the White House's handling of the Gaza war.
Greenberg-Kohl, who retired from the Interior Department in mid-May, slammed the Biden administration for “enabling and justifying” Israel's onslaught on the Gaza Strip.
“I can no longer continue to represent the Administration without compunction as President Biden continues his catastrophic support for Israel's genocide in Gaza,” she said in her resignation letter.
Biden's Middle East policy has come under fire repeatedly since the start of Israel's military operation in Gaza, particularly over weapons supplies to the Israel Defense Forces, which human rights groups say are being used to harm civilians.
On October 7, Israeli forces carried out bombing raids on the Gaza Strip in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, killing at least 35,000 Palestinians, destroying entire neighborhoods, destroying Gaza's infrastructure and forcing 90 percent of its residents to flee.
Israeli and Biden administration officials have said Hamas also bears responsibility for the rising civilian death toll in Gaza.
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan previously said Hamas' tactic of hiding among civilians while waging its war against Israel has “put an incredible strain on the IDF, an unprecedented strain for a military in this day and age.”
The same day Greenberg-Kohl resigned, the Biden administration told Congress it plans to send $1 billion in new military aid to Israel, despite the president's opposition to an all-out invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza, The Associated Press reported. It would be the first US shipment of weapons to Israel since Biden suspended the shipment of 3,500 bombs earlier this month.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced in April that the Israeli military would expand its operations into Gaza's southernmost city of Rafah. On May 6, Israel launched a limited operation in Rafah, seizing the border crossing with Egypt.
The U.S. government said it halted the bomb shipment to prevent Israel from using it in attacks on Rafah, an area densely populated by civilians, many of whom have been displaced multiple times.
But the House of Representatives passed a resolution on May 16 condemning President Biden's suspension and overturning it, with Republicans arguing that the president should not dictate how Israel uses US weapons in its war against Hamas.
But the U.S. Arms Export Control Act of 1961 gives the president the power to suspend or even terminate U.S. arms transfers if it finds that the recipient country has “used such items for unauthorized purposes,” according to a 2020 report by the Congressional Research Service.
Following the vote, about 30 congressional staffers marched to the bottom of the House of Representatives steps at the US Capitol to demand a ceasefire in Gaza and protest the vote.
After announcing the halt to the bomb shipments, President Biden told CNN that US-made weapons had been used to kill civilians in Gaza.
“Civilians are being killed in Gaza as a result of bombs and other means targeting populated areas,” he said on May 8.
“If they invade Rafah — they haven't invaded Rafah yet — if they invade Rafah, I have made it very clear that we will not supply the weapons that have been historically used to deal with Rafah or any city that deals with that issue.”
According to The Washington Post, the US has sold more than 100 weapons to Israel since the start of the Gaza war, including precision-guided munitions, small-caliber bombs, bunker busters and small arms.
In late April, human rights watchdog Amnesty International submitted a 19-page report to US authorities, alleging that US weapons provided to Israel “have been used in serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law and in violation of US law and policy.”
The newly revised U.S. conventional arms transfer policy, announced last February, provides for “preventing arms transfers that contribute or are likely to contribute to human rights abuses or violations of international humanitarian law.”
Hala Lalit, who retired as the State Department's Arabic-language spokesperson in April after 18 years in the job, stressed that governments should “abide by their own laws.”
She told Arab News: “We have systems in place within the State Department to ensure that our weapons are not used to kill civilians, and we have requirements in place for recipient countries to limit harm to civilians, and that includes both civilians and civilian infrastructure.”
“There are laws that we as the State Department are ignoring, willfully ignoring,” she continued. “The Arms Export Control Act, the Foreign Assistance Act, the Leahy Act, there are regulations that would ensure that what is currently happening would never happen.”
Lalit urged the government to comply with these laws, saying, “We will automatically have to attach conditions to aid, most specifically reducing offensive military aid to Israel.”
Suspending military aid to Israel would not only “hopefully ensure that the IDF does not advance into Rafah,” but also “restore credibility among Arab countries — that we are in fact placing conditions on aid, that we are upholding our own laws, that we are adhering to international law.”
“And that could give both the Israeli side and the Arab countries leverage to pressure Hamas to reach a ceasefire. We have the ability to use that leverage as the United States, but we're not using it right now.”
Asked about his resignation, Lalit said: “I never thought I would resign, nor did I think I would resign in protest against any policy.”
But the humanitarian tragedy in Gaza “changed that completely,” she told Arab News. “I could not in good conscience continue to serve in the government. After 18 years at the State Department, I finally decided to resign.”
She added: “I spoke up internally. I aired my voice and my concerns, not based on my personal opinion, but on what I was monitoring. I was monitoring pan-Arab traditional media and social media.”
“I was watching, recording and reporting all this growing anti-American sentiment to Washington… No one was convinced and we were losing credibility.”
Lalit, a former human rights official, continued: “Human rights violations are one of the things we (the US) are known for and one of the things we stand for, yet every day I saw human rights violation after human rights violation. It was clear that we had double standards and I could no longer support the policies or the administration.”
Despite their expertise, Lalit said their voices were not heard: “Our concerns, feedback and records of all happenings in the area were ignored, which was extremely frustrating.”
She said the US policy in Gaza was “a failed militarist policy that has achieved nothing. More than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed, over 15,000 of them children, while hostages remain in Israel with their families to protest to Prime Minister Netanyahu and demand a ceasefire.”
She added: “It has become clear to me that despite unimaginable suffering and countless attempts by many on the inside to change the policy, the status quo is not going to change.
“Seeing how this policy has continued to dehumanize and destroy Palestinians, created a cycle of violence that has hurt all sides involved, and weakened America for generations, I had no choice but to speak out in opposition to this policy from outside of government.”
Lalit's successor in late March was Anel Sherein, a foreign affairs officer in the State Department's human rights bureau, who resigned after “internal protests,” she told ABC News on April 11.
“My colleagues and others inside the State Department are saddened by U.S. policy that enables Israeli actions against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” she said.
“They (the Biden administration) keep sending weapons. We've seen new weapons announcements. It's really shocking that this is being allowed to happen.”
In January, Tariq Habash, a Palestinian-American appointee of former President Biden, resigned from the Department of Education, saying the U.S. administration was “turning a blind eye to atrocities against innocent Palestinian lives.”
In his resignation letter, shared on social media platform “X,” Habash said his government had “supported indiscriminate violence against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”
He added: “Despite Israel's claims of focusing on Hamas, simultaneous military operations continue throughout the West Bank, where Hamas has no controlled forces.”
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, Israeli forces and Jewish settlers have killed at least 502 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since October 7. Israeli authorities have arrested more than 7,000 people in the area, according to the Prisoners' Affairs group.
Ten days after Israel began its Gaza attack, Josh Paul, the former director overseeing U.S. arms transfers, resigned from the State Department, citing “policy disagreements regarding the United States' continued lethal support for Israel.”
In a letter posted on LinkedIn, Paul said his government's “rush” to provide weapons to Israel was “shortsighted, destructive, unjust and contrary to the very values we publicly espouse.”
He described Hamas' attacks on southern Israel as “a monster among monsters,” but said he also believes “the response Israel is taking, and the resulting U.S. support for that response and for maintaining the status quo of the occupation, will only lead to greater suffering for both Israelis and Palestinians.”
Protests by administration officials against Middle East policy have taken many forms beyond official resignations: In November, more than 400 Biden staffers signed an open letter calling for the immediate pursuit of a ceasefire in Gaza.
With the looming US presidential election complicating Biden's room for maneuver, the Israeli government is determined to go on the offensive, and negotiations brokered by Qatar and Egypt have made little progress, such a ceasefire seems unlikely anytime soon.
