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.
