Hundreds of U.S. officials have signed on to a letter to President Joe Biden urging him to reconsider his support for Israel as it carries out its war against Hamas in Gaza.
The more than 400 signatories of the letter, the latest demonstration of the frustration within the government of the president's continued support for Israel, urged Biden to call for an immediate ceasefire and to pressure Israel into allowing humanitarian aid into the territory, according to the New York Times.
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“We call on President Biden to urgently demand a cease-fire; and to call for de-escalation of the current conflict by securing the immediate release of the Israeli hostages and arbitrarily detained Palestinians; the restoration of water, fuel, electricity and other basic services; and the passage of adequate humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip,” the letter reads.
Israel declared war on Hamas, with the stated objectives of removing the group from power in Gaza and eliminating its military capabilities, following the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in which roughly 1,200 people were killed in southern Israel. But accomplishing those goals will be much more difficult, given the urban landscape and Hamas's tactics. The vast majority of the Oct. 7 victims were civilians, including women and children — several showed signs of torture, others were burned alive, and about 260 people were killed at an outdoor concert.
The initial stages of the Israeli military's response to the attack occurred primarily through airstrikes and dropping bombs, which resulted in staggering amounts of death and destruction throughout the tiny enclave of the Gaza Strip. Many thousands of Palestinian civilians have been killed, in part because Hamas intentionally embeds itself within the civilian population to incur those deaths and to insulate themselves. The group also has an expansive tunnel system underneath densely populated areas and civilian areas such as hospitals, mosques, and schools.
The significant death toll, the overwhelming destruction of Gaza's infrastructure, and the displacement of more than a million Palestinians have led to international calls for a ceasefire. But the Biden administration is not among those who have made those calls. Instead, the administration (which has admitted that Israel should do more to prevent civilian casualties) has pushed for brief pauses in the fighting to allow aid to come in and civilians to evacuate, supporting Israel's stance that Hamas cannot remain in power in Gaza, which a ceasefire would presumably permit to occur.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller addressed the discontent within the department over the administration's stance during Monday's briefing, saying that a "diversity of views" is one of the department's "strengths."
"One of the things that we think is one of our strengths — you’ve heard me talk to this before, you’ve heard Vedant talk to this last week, I think you’ve heard the secretary talk to this at times — one of our strengths as an organization is that we have that diversity of views and that we welcome people to make those views known," he said.
"The secretary has met with a number of people from all ranks of the department, from different bureaus in the department, to hear exactly what they think about our policy both with respect to Israel and its conflict with Hamas and with respect to other matters, including very controversial matters, and he encourages people to provide feedback," Miller said. "He encourages people to speak up if they disagree. It doesn’t mean that we’re going to change our policy based on their disagreements. He is going to take their recommendations and make ultimately what he thinks is the best judgment and make his recommendations to the president about what we ought to do."
Senior State Department official Josh Paul resigned last month from his role at the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs over the U.S. sending "blind ... continued lethal assistance" to Israel.
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The State Department is not the only U.S. agency to face pushback on its support for Israel. More than 30 humanitarian, human rights, and civilian protection groups signed a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Monday, calling on the Pentagon not to provide Israel with 155mm munitions that they argue would be "inherently indiscriminate" due to Gaza's dense population.
The Defense Department has provided Israel with military aid since the war broke out, and Austin has surged military power to the Middle East to act as a deterrent and urge other adversaries of Israel (including Hezbollah, the primary terrorist group in Lebanon, and Iran itself, which supports both Hezbollah and Hamas) not to get involved in the current conflict.