Thread by @humeyra_pamuk

SCOOP: The United States gathered intelligence last year that Israel’s military lawyers warned there was evidence that could support war crimes charges against Israel for its military campaign in Gaza, five former U.S. officials told @ErinBanco @JonathanLanday and me 1/x

The previously unreported intelligence, described by the former officials as among the most startling shared with top US policymakers during the war, pointed to doubts within the Israeli military about the legality of its tactics that contrasted sharply w/Israel’s public stance

Two of the former U.S. officials said the material was not broadly circulated within the U.S. government until late in the Biden administration, when it was disseminated more widely ahead of a congressional briefing in December 2024.

Even before the U.S. gathered war crimes intelligence from within the Israeli military, lawyers at the State Department repeatedly raised concerns with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Israel might be committing war crimes, according to five former U.S. officials.

As early as December 2023, lawyers from the State Department's legal bureau told Blinken in meetings that they believed that Israel's military conduct in Gaza likely amounted to violations of international humanitarian law and potentially war crimes, per officials.

The U.S. debate about whether the Israelis had committed war crimes in Gaza ended when USG lawyers determined that it was still legal for the U.S. to continue supporting Israel w/weapons & intel because the U.S. had not gathered its own evidence on the issue.

Full story here. Read and please feel free to share reuters.com/world/us/us-in…

State Dept lawyers inevitably in the spotlight in this saga so I’d like to emphasize something that’s already in the story:

They did raise concerns, multiple times but they also fell short of making a conclusive assessment on Israel’s conduct & there are reasons for it:

The primary role of the State Dept lawyers are seen, by many, is making sure that the policy the leadership is adopting is legally defensible. If policy is XYZ, hard for them to go against that without the support of the 7th floor.

And some people push back against this description, see the legal bureau’s role differently, assign more agency to them, and say they could have done more. These inner debates have played throughout the war. The result did not change.

In other conflicts, State Dept leadership initiated what is called an atrocity determination that resulted in USG formally declaring, for example, what the Myanmar army did to the Rohingya minority a genocide. Based on all we know, such a tasking has not occurred for Gaza.