A State Department Official resigned from the agency over the Biden administration’s approach to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Josh Paul worked for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs for over 11 years.
He announced on his LinkedIn account that he resigned because of the “blind support for one side” and the transfer of lethal weapons to Israel, which continues the war on Gaza.
Biden has requested an additional $10 billion to provide more military aid to Israel.
“The fact is, blind support for one side is destructive in the long term to the interests of the people on both sides.”
Paul said that he cannot work to support a set of policy decisions that include sending over arms, which he believes to be “shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse.”
“I believe to the core of my soul that the response Israel is taking, and with it the US support both for that response and 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,” he said.
He described the Administration’s and much of Congress’s response as “an impulsive reaction built on confirmation bias, political convenience, intellectual bankruptcy, and bureaucratic inertia.”
- US weapons
Paul told the media that Israel’s cutting off of water, food, medical care, and electricity to the Gaza Strip, a region of over two million people, should prompt protections in several longstanding federal laws intended to keep American weapons out of the hands of human rights violators.
But those legal guardrails are failing.
“The problem with all of those provisions is that it rests on the executive branch deciding that human rights violations have occurred,” Paul said.
“The decision to make a determination doesn’t rest with some nonpartisan academic entity, and there’s no incentive for the president to determine anything.”
Paul said that he had seen the US government approve numerous sales or shipments of materiel to other Middle Eastern countries, even when he believed federal law should have prevented them from going forward.
“On all of them, there’s a moment where you can say, OK, well, you know, it’s out of my hands, but I know Congress is going to push back,” he said, by issuing a hold on the transfer or grilling officials in hearings at the Capitol.
Paul noted that there isn’t any significant pushback likely from Congress, there isn’t any other oversight mechanism, there isn’t any other forum for debate, and that’s part of what got into his decision-making.
- Carte blanche
Paul warned that continuing to give Israel what he described as “carte blanche” to kill a generation of enemies only to create a new one does not ultimately serve the United States’ interests.
“What it leads to is this desire to sort of impose security at any cost, including in cost to the Palestinian civilian population,” he said. “And that doesn’t ultimately lead to security.”
“This administration, I think, knows better and understands some of the complexity but brought very little of that nuance to the policy decisions being made.”
Paul said he received an outpouring of support from State Department colleagues and congressional staff members since posting his resignation letter.
“Many people are wrestling with this being the current policy and are finding it deeply problematic,” he said.
“I’ve been quite moved by some of the folks who have reached out to say they understand where I’m coming from. They respect my decision. It’s been very supportive.”
