State Department Official Resigns Over US Policy in Gaza

US State Department offices in Washington (Reuters)
US State Department offices in Washington (Reuters)
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State Department Official Resigns Over US Policy in Gaza

US State Department offices in Washington (Reuters)
US State Department offices in Washington (Reuters)

A senior US State Department official resigned this week over disagreements with a newly published report by the Biden administration concluding Israel was not blocking aid into Gaza.

Meanwhile, recent analyses revealed that munitions manufactured in the US were used in the deadly Israeli airstrike Sunday on a displacement camp in the Gaza Strip's southernmost city of Rafah.

Despite these developments, US officials still refuse to say Israel had crossed a red line set weeks ago by US President Joe Biden who had warned the Israeli government of Benjamin Nentanyahu from invading Rafah. But the Israeli Prime Minister didn't heed the US warning.

This week, the resignation of Stacy Gilbert adds to a list of State Department officials who quit the administration in protest at Biden’s support for Israel.

Josh Paul, the director of congressional and public affairs for the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, and Hala Rharrit, the Arabic Language Spokesperson for the State Department, in addition to several State Department employees, have resigned over the US support for Tel Aviv.

Gilbert sent an e-mail to the State Department employees, saying the department report that Israel did not obstruct aid to Gaza was incorrect.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller declined to discuss Gilbert's resignation. But he said the US administration welcomes diverse viewpoints.

Later, in a LinkedIn post, Josh Paul, who was the first State Department official to quit in protest against US support for Israel, welcomed Gilbert’s departure.

“On the day when the White House announced that the latest atrocity in Rafah did not cross its red line, this resignation demonstrates that the Biden Administration will do anything to avoid the truth,” he wrote.

Paul added, “But this is not just a story of bureaucratic complicity or ineptitude - there are people signing off on arms transfers, people drafting arms transfer approval memos, people turning a blind eye.”

He also spoke about people “who could be speaking up, people who have an immense responsibility to do good, and a lifelong commitment to human rights - whose choice is to let the bureaucracy function as though it were business as usual.”

In February, Biden issued a national security memorandum (NSM-20) on whether the administration finds credible Israel's assurances that its use of US weapons does not violate either US or international law.

Lately, the administration paused a shipment of weapons, including some bombs and precision-guided equipment, to Israel in opposition to apparent moves by its forces to invade Rafah.

However, despite the rising death toll and increased military operations, the administration kept the flow of most weapons unchanged, declaring that Israel's actions in the crowded border city of Rafah have still not crossed the "red line" set by Biden.

Meanwhile, analysis published by CNN on Wednesday revealed that munitions made in the United States were used in the deadly Israeli strike on a displacement camp in Rafah on Sunday.

At least 45 people were killed and more than 250 others injured after a fire broke out following the Israeli army’s strike on the outskirts of the city, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry and Palestinian medics.

In video shared on social media, which CNN geolocated to the same scene by matching details including the camp’s entrance sign and the tiles on the ground, the tail of a US-made GBU-39 small diameter bomb (SDB) is visible, according to four explosive weapons experts who reviewed the video for CNN.

The GBU-39, which is manufactured by Boeing, is a high-precision munition “designed to attack strategically important point targets,” and result in low collateral damage, explosive weapons expert Chris Cobb-Smith told the channel on Tuesday.



Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
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Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)

Bangladeshi police detectives on Friday forced the discharge from hospital of three student protest leaders blamed for deadly unrest, taking them to an unknown location, staff told AFP.

Nahid Islam, Asif Mahmud and Abu Baker Majumder are all members of Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for organizing this month's street rallies against civil service hiring rules.

At least 195 people were killed in the ensuing police crackdown and clashes, according to an AFP count of victims reported by police and hospitals, in some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's tenure.

All three were patients at a hospital in the capital Dhaka, and at least two of them said their injuries were caused by torture in earlier police custody.

"They took them from us," Gonoshasthaya hospital supervisor Anwara Begum Lucky told AFP. "The men were from the Detective Branch."

She added that she had not wanted to discharge the student leaders but police had pressured the hospital chief to do so.

Islam's elder sister Fatema Tasnim told AFP from the hospital that six plainclothes detectives had taken all three men.

The trio's student group had suspended fresh protests at the start of this week, saying they had wanted the reform of government job quotas but not "at the expense of so much blood".

The pause was due to expire earlier on Friday but the group had given no indication of its future course of action.

Islam, 26, the chief coordinator of Students Against Discrimination, told AFP from his hospital bed on Monday that he feared for his life.

He said that two days beforehand, a group of people identifying themselves as police detectives blindfolded and handcuffed him and took him to an unknown location.

Islam added that he had come to his senses the following morning on a roadside in Dhaka.

Mahmud earlier told AFP that he had also been detained by police and beaten at the height of last week's unrest.

Three senior police officers in Dhaka all denied that the trio had been taken from the hospital and into custody on Friday.

- Garment tycoon arrested -

Police told AFP on Thursday that they had arrested at least 4,000 people since the unrest began last week, including 2,500 in Dhaka.

On Friday police said they had arrested David Hasanat, the founder and chief executive of one of Bangladesh's biggest garment factory enterprises.

His Viyellatex Group employs more than 15,000 people according to its website, and its annual turnover was estimated at $400 million by the Daily Star newspaper last year.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police inspector Abu Sayed Miah said Hasanat and several others were suspected of financing the "anarchy, arson and vandalism" of last week.

Bangladesh makes around $50 billion in annual export earnings from the textile trade, which services leading global brands including H&M, Gap and others.

Student protests began this month after the reintroduction in June of a scheme reserving more than half of government jobs for certain candidates.

With around 18 million young people in Bangladesh out of work, according to government figures, the move deeply upset graduates facing an acute jobs crisis.

Critics say the quota is used to stack public jobs with loyalists to Hasina's Awami League.

- 'Call to the nation' -

The Supreme Court cut the number of reserved jobs on Sunday but fell short of protesters' demands to scrap the quotas entirely.

Hasina has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

Her government is also accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

Hasina continued a tour of government buildings that had been ransacked by protesters, on Friday visiting state broadcaster Bangladesh Television, which was partly set ablaze last week.

"Find those who were involved in this," she said, according to state news agency BSS.

"Cooperate with us to ensure their punishment. I am making this call to the nation."