New Delhi: A senior US State Department official has resigned from his post after eleven years of service, citing disagreement with the Joe Biden-led administration’s decision to transfer arms to Israel amid the ongoing conflict with Hamas.
This comes hours after the US President visited Tel Aviv in a show of solidarity while Israel prepared for a ground offensive in Gaza to flush out Hamas militants.
In a LinkedIn post Wednesday, Josh Paul, Director of Congressional & Public Affairs, Bureau of Political-Military Affairs at the US Department of State, accused the US of providing “lethal assistance” to Israel and warned that “blind support” for one side was leading to “shortsighted, destructive, unjust” policy decisions.
“This administration’s response – and much of Congress’ as well — is an impulsive reaction built on confirmation bias, political convenience, intellectual bankruptcy and bureaucratic inertia. That is to say, it is immensely disappointing…,” said the former official.
“The fact is, blind support for one side is destructive in the long term to the interests of the people on both sides. I fear we are repeating the same mistakes we have made these past decades and I decline to be a part of it for longer,” he added.
American reportage has termed Paul’s exit as a critical sign of dissent within the Biden administration.
While The Washington Post called it a “rare” show of dissent, The New York Times quoted Paul as saying that he had seen Washington approve military assistance to other Middle Eastern countries “even when he believed federal law should have prevented them from going forward”.
On Thursday, after talks with Israel, Biden announced that Egypt had agreed to open a humanitarian aid route to Gaza. The US, which has already moved warships and aircraft to the region, is reportedly preparing a $10 billion package for Israel.
The Biden administration has also pledged $100 million in humanitarian aid for the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank, after Israel announced it would block food, water and aid to crisis-hit Gaza.
In his resignation letter, Paul, who has in the past served as US Security Coordinator in Ramallah, said he was “heartened” to see efforts by Washington to restrain the Israeli response to Hamas’s terror attack on 7 October.
“I acknowledge and am heartened to see the efforts this administration has made to temper Israel’s response,” he said.
During his visit to Israel, Biden reportedly warned the top Israeli leadership against making the same mistakes Washington made after the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001.
However, Paul added: “But I believe to the core of my soul that the response Israel is taking, and with it the American support both for that response, and for the status quo of the occupation, will only lead to more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people…”
He also spoke against “collective punishment” during the conflict — a term used by Spanish minister of Social Rights Ione Belarra and European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell when they respectively spoke about the conflict last week.
Under Article 33 of the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol II, “collective punishment” is considered a war crime. It prohibits collective punishment of prisoners of war or other protected persons for acts committed by individuals during an armed conflict.
“In my 11 years I have made more moral compromises than I can recall, each heavily, but each with my promise to myself in mind, and intact. I am leaving today because I believe that in our current course with regards to the continued – indeed, expanded and expedited – provision of lethal arms to Israel – I have reached the end of that bargain.”
In his note, Paul also warned against the sidestepping of human rights through diplomatic “manoeuvering”.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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