U.S. investigates whether Israel violated laws of war in Gaza

The Biden administration has not yet concluded that Israel has violated the international laws of war, but the assessment process is ongoing and has not yet yielded a conclusion.

This was stated by State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, RBC-Ukraine reports, citing a press briefing on March 26.

According to him, the administration is to submit a report to the US Congress by May 8 as part of the February national security memorandum. The document reminds countries receiving US weapons of the need to comply with international law and not block humanitarian aid.

"These processes of assessing their compliance with international humanitarian law are ongoing, they have not reached their conclusion. And the next step will be to provide a report to Congress - that's the next thing that this memorandum requires on May 8 - where we will look at these issues in more detail," Miller said.

The memorandum does not impose new conditions on the use of U.S. military equipment but requires the Biden administration to send a report to Congress within 90 days on whether countries are meeting these requirements.

Asked whether U.S. officials will conclude this issue before submitting their report to Congress in early May, Miller said that an active process is underway to determine what the report will look like.

"This is a completely new process. We've never reported this before," he said.

Last week, Israel provided written assurances, as required by the memorandum, that weapons provided by the United States are not being used to violate humanitarian law in the Gaza Strip.

Author - Serhii Kolomiets, 27/03/2024