Because of that, the administration said it still finds credible Israel’s assurances that it is using U.S. weapons in accordance with international law.

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Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen said the administration had “ducked all the hard questions” and avoided looking closely at whether Israel’s conduct should mean military aid is cut off.

“This report contradicts itself because it concludes that there are reasonable grounds to believe violations to international law have occurred, but at the same time that says they’re not finding non-compliance,” he told reporters.

More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s seven-month-old assault on the Gaza Strip, say health officials in the Hamas-ruled enclave. The war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7, killing 1200 people and abducting

252 others, of whom 133 are believed to remain in captivity in Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

“Excessive” civilian harm

Israel’s military conduct has come under increasing scrutiny with the soaring death toll and the level of devastation in the Gaza Strip.

US officials at the State Department have been divided over the issue. It was reported in late April that officials in at least four bureaus inside the agency have raised serious concerns over Israel’s conduct in Gaza, laying out specific examples where the country might be in breach of the law.

Rights group Amnesty International in late April said US-supplied weapons provided to Israel had been used in “serious violations” of international humanitarian and human rights law, detailing specific cases of civilian deaths and injuries and examples of use of unlawful lethal force.

The US government reviewed numerous reports that raise questions about Israel’s compliance with its legal obligations and best practices for mitigating harm to civilians, the report said.

Those included Israeli strikes on civilian infrastructure, strikes in densely populated areas and others that call into question whether “expected civilian harm may have been excessive relative to the reported military objective.”

According to the report released Friday, in the period after October 7 Israel “did not fully cooperate” with US and other international efforts to get humanitarian aid into Gaza. But it said this did not amount to a breach of a US law that blocks the provision of arms to countries that restrict US humanitarian aid.

It said Israel had acted to improve aid delivery since Biden warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a call early last month that Washington would withhold some arms supplies if the humanitarian situation did not improve.

The report, Washington has decided to declassify, said individual violations do not necessarily disprove Israel’s commitment to international humanitarian law, as long as it takes steps to investigate and hold violators accountable.

“Israel’s own concern about such incidents is reflected in the fact it has a number of internal investigations underway,” the report said. A senior State Department official confirmed that none of those investigations had yet led to prosecutions.

It also has compiled numerous instances in which humanitarian workers have been killed and military operations had taken place in protected sites but again said it was not able to reach definitive conclusions on whether U.S. weapons were used in these occasions.

Reuters