3rd Thursday Action Alert: Urge U.S. officials to institute guardrails for U.S. arms transfers and sales
A week after Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke before Congress and confirmed to President Biden his commitment to bring hostages home through a ceasefire deal, Israel is widely believed to have assassinated one of Hamas’ lead negotiators, Ismail Haniyeh. Israel has not officially acknowledged responsibility, nor denied it. The assassination of Haniyeh occurred in Tehran, just after he had attended the inauguration of Iran’s new president in Tehran — and hours after Israel confirmed it killed a top commander in Iran’s ally Hezbollah in the Lebanese capital, Beirut. The Biden administration has voiced grave concern that these recent killings could escalate to a regional war and the U.S. has sent more vessels and aircraft to the region as a result. The Administration also announced this week the approval of $20 billion in weapons sales to Israel, including F-15 fighter jets, missiles, and tank munitions.
Qatari Prime Minister and key negotiation mediator in talks, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, wrote immediately after the news, “Political assassinations and continued targeting of civilians in Gaza while talks continue leads us to ask, how can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?”
Nearly 40,000 Palestinians have died and thousands more have been arrested and held without charges in the retaliatory military action by Israel since 1,200 Israelis were killed in a Hamas militants attack on October 7th and 250 Israelis were taken hostage – 110 who remain in captivity.
U.S. President Biden described the Israeli assassination as “not helpful” to the ceasefire talks – a bewilderingly delicate rendering of the extrajudicial assassination. Those ceasefire talks aim to bring hostages – both Israeli and American – home and end the violence that has taken a tremendous civilian toll. In the days following, Netanyahu delegated Israeli officials to attend peace talks in Cairo, Egypt to discuss the additional terms that Netanyahu has recently added to his previously agreed on terms, including future Israeli control over the Philadelphi corridor that borders Egypt and Gaza’s Rafah border crossing. In news that shocked many, those Israeli negotiators – the Directors of Israel’s Mossad and Shin Bet — have suggested that the Prime Minister is purposefully sabotaging the ceasefire deal because he is unwilling to say publicly he no longer supports a ceasefire around which the release of Israeli hostages is dependent.
These events demonstrate a further unraveling of a long-hoped for peace deal and the skirting of international criminal justice system through the extrajudicial killing of Haniyeh, as the International Criminal Court had sought arrest warrants for him as well as other Hamas and Israeli leaders.
Despite these events occurring only a week after Netanyahu’s speech to Congress and his publicly stated commitment to the peace talks, Congress shows no advancement of legislation that would increase pressure on the Israeli government to earnestly engage in negotiations that would end the violence in Gaza, decrease the risk of famine in Gaza, or bring home Israeli and American hostages. In fact, in the wake of reports that nine of UNRWA’s 30,000 employees may have participated in the October 7th attack on Israeli civilians, Congress has passed legislation to prohibit funding to any of UNRWA’s programs.
Meanwhile, since the Oct. 7 attack, Israeli security forces and Jewish settlers have killed 528 Palestinians, 133 of them children, in the West Bank. U.N. human rights officials have warned that the situation is deteriorating dramatically as Israel has approved the largest seizure of land in the occupied West Bank in over three decades. Human rights organizations have catalogued thousands of Palestinians detained in Israeli without charges and abused while being kept in inhuman conditions.
Congress must do more. U.S. legislators must withhold U.S. aid to pressure Israel to adhere to international norms and law — and a genuine commitment to pursue peace as devotedly as Netanyahu is now pursuing war. Palestinians, Israelis, Americans, and the world depend on U.S. legislators showing meaningful leadership on guardrails for military arms transfer.
Urge U.S. officials to institute guardrails for U.S. arms transfers and sales now.
