US State Department staff have prepared dissent cables over unwavering support of American President Joe Biden’s administration for Israel’s atrocities in the besieged Gaza Strip, as they fear a possible mutiny is brewing inside the department.
In a report on Wednesday, citing several unnamed sources, the UK-based news website Middle East Eye said that as tensions are at fever-pitch within the State Department, officials are increasingly frustrated with the White House’s open support of an ongoing “bloodbath” by Israel against Palestinian people in the coastal enclave.
In response to a surprise attack by the Palestinian Hamas resistance group against Israel on October 7, Israel launched a full-scale war on the impoverished and densely-populated Gaza Strip, where shortages of food, water, and medicine threaten the lives of Gazans and hospitals are overwhelmed amid incessant Israeli bombings.
As of Wednesday, it has killed 6,546 Palestinians, including 2,704 children, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
As relentless airstrikes and missile attacks by the Tel Aviv regime claim more lives, including children, the West, including the United States, has remained almost silent over the appalling humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the killing of civilians around the clock there.
In one draft dissent cable, seen by MEE, US State Department officials said that Hamas’s attack on Israel could not be used as a justification for the Tel Aviv regime to carry out the indiscriminate killing of innocent people in Gaza.
“When Israeli officials no longer differentiate between Hamas and civilians of Gaza – when strikes target or threaten civilian institutions such as places of worship, schools, or medical facilities – Israel must work double to rejoin adherence to international norms we so proudly and rightly preach to other nations,” the cable read.
The dissent cable is a document submitted through an internal channel that allows diplomats to raise concerns or issues against damaging US foreign policy decisions.
“Despite the outcries from our own officials, reporting from the ground, international groups, and the American public, there has been no change in US foreign policy with Israel other than increasing support and funding to continue killing innocent Palestinian civilians,” one of the sources said.
“At the very least, it will officially put on record that there are and were attempts by State Department officials to stop the genocide so that future generations can make sure this is never repeated,” the source added.
On Sunday, the US submitted a draft for a UN Security Council resolution on Israel’s onslaught in Gaza without any mention of a ceasefire in it. The US-drafted resolution condemned the Hamas resistance group’s Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, urged the release of war prisoners, and supported Israel’s so-called right to defend itself. However, it did not stipulate a call for a ceasefire.
“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 – and is not in the long term American interest,” said Josh Paul, who worked for more than a decade in the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, in a statement.
According to UNICEF, more than 400 children are being killed or wounded daily in incessant shelling attacks on the Gaza Strip
Reporting that 2,360 children had been killed in less than three weeks, UNICEF on Tuesday called for an immediate ceasefire and unimpeded access to humanitarian assistance. It added that 5,364 children also sustained wounds in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war.
Almost every child in the Gaza Strip has been exposed to deeply distressing events and trauma, marked by widespread destruction, relentless attacks, displacement, and severe shortages of daily necessities such as food, water, and medicine, UNICEF said.
