US State Department official Resigns claims that Administration Falsely stated Gaza Report
The American official, Stacy Gilbert from the State Department, quit her job this week ‘because of a recent report to Congress, which she asserts misrepresented by stating that Israel was not preventing Humanitarian supplies from reaching Gaza. Acting Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, now turned diplomat Aaron S. Gilbert, expressed disappointment in Biden’s policy regarding Israel.
In an interview, Gilbert expressed her disapproval: There is no doubt that it is right and wrong, and what is in that report is incorrect; the report was submitted to Congress this month and was a part of the requirement under the new NSM issued by Biden in the first week of February.
It concluded that although Israel “did not fully cooperate” with the attempts at delivering humanitarian aid in Gaza, this did not amount to violating the U. S. law that prohibits providing arms to countries that hinder U. S. humanitarian aid.
This report was released the same day Gilbert, who had worked in the State Department for over 20 years, announced her resignation. She was on Tuesday attending to her duties before she was dismissed from work. She recalled previous UN and aid organisations’ worries connected with difficulties and risks in delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza.
While the number of Palestinians who have been killed in Gaza recently exceeds 36,000 in the conditions of a critical humanitarian catastrophe, human rights organisations and Israeli critics have condemned the US, stating it supports Israel by providing it with arms and denying its acts’ illegality.
When asked about personnel issues, State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel only said that he would not be able to discuss that; however, he highlighted the department’s inclusive stance. According to Patel, the administration supported the report and went on calling on Israel not to endanger the lives of civilians and to increase humanitarian aid to Gaza. ”The social democratic party is not an administration that takes lots of tweaks on the facts, and we have made allegations,” Patel stated.
The Israeli embassy in Washington has yet to react to these assertions and requests for prompt comments from Gilbert.
Gilbert’s bureau was one of four bureaus that composed a classified options memo; this memo leaked to Reuters at the end of April 2021, signalling to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Israel might be breaching IHHL. As Gilbert put it, officials writing the report worked with the subject matter experts, and then those experts were taken off the report about ten days before it was due; senior officials reworked the final form of that report. She also mentioned that in the version visible to her before the last one, the message was clear that Israel was preventing humanitarian help. In contrast, the message was absent in the final text of the publication.
Gilbert is one more official who resigned over such concerns as the Arabic language spokesperson Hala Rharrit and Annelle Sheline of the Human Rights Bureau. As of now, the conflict has been characterised by the death of 36,492 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Israel’s offence was launched after the October 7 dawn raid by Hamas fighters who infiltrated into the Israeli territory from southern Gaza, laying waste to 1,200 people and capturing over 250, as alleged by Israeli authorities.
Gilbert’s resignation reveals internal conflict, the ethical struggles of U.S. politicians and officials over the administration’s approach to policies, and reports of the situation in Gaza.
