The United States Department of State determined that five Israeli security units committed serious human rights violations before the start of the war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The ministry is still deciding whether to restrict military assistance to one of the units – supposedly the ultra-Orthodox Netzah Yehuda battalion. This battalion would be involved in the death, in January 2022, of an elderly Palestinian-American.
The other four units “effectively remedied these violations,” State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel said on Monday (29), without detailing these remediation actions.
In an undated letter to U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said three of the five units are part of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and two are “civil authority units,” reporting that the abuses occurred in the West Bank.
“We continue with consultations and commitments with the Israeli government. They sent additional information regarding this unit and we continue to have these conversations”, highlighted Patel.
“All of these incidents occurred long before October 7 and none occurred in the Gaza Strip,” Patel noted.
According to one source, the Israelis told the US in recent weeks about actions they had previously taken that were not revealed. Meanwhile, the American government is smoothing these actions to see if they are enough to postpone the restriction of aid.
Joe Biden's administration has been criticized for allegedly bowing to pressure from the Israeli government to delay any punitive measures against the unit.
Senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, expressed harsh criticism of reports that the US would take action.
“At a time when our soldiers are fighting the monsters of terror, the intention to impose a sanction on an IDF unit is the height of absurdity and a low moral bar,” Netanyahu posted on X last week.
“The government led by me will act by all means against these measures,” he added.
US denies “single treatment”
Patel, deputy spokesman for the US State Department, on Monday rejected the idea that Israel was “getting a one-size-fits-all treatment” by having more time to present information in order to avoid possible punishment.
“There is nothing I have described here that is inconsistent with the Leahy process,” he highlighted.
Under the Leahy Act, the United States cannot provide assistance to foreign security units that are credibly implicated in human rights violations.
Still, there is an exception that “allows assistance to be resumed to a unit if the Secretary of State determines and reports to Congress that the government of the country is taking effective measures to bring responsible members of the security forces unit to justice.”
However, for one of the IDF units, Blinken “has determined that there has been no effective remediation to date,” he wrote in the letter to Johnson.
“This unit has been recognized by the Israeli government as having engaged in conduct inconsistent with IDF rules and, as a result, has been transferred from the West Bank to the Golan Heights in 2022,” Blinken wrote, without naming the unit.
The Netzah Yehuda battalion was transferred from the West Bank to the Golan Heights in 2022.
The unit's commander was reprimanded in late January 2022 following the death of 78-year-old Palestinian-American Omar Assad, who died of a heart attack after being detained, bound and gagged, according to the IDF.
No soldiers faced criminal charges in connection with Assad's death.
In the letter, Blinken also highlighted: “The Israeli government has presented new information about the situation at the unit and we will strive to identify a path to effective remediation for this unit.”
Patel did not provide details about when the additional information was presented to the US or about the remediation process.
“The standard of remediation is that these respective countries take effective measures to hold the responsible party accountable to justice. And this is different from country to country”, he pondered at a press conference.
Source: CNN Brasil
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