A group of White House staffers convened a meeting with a group of President Joe Biden’s top advisers, including his chief of staff, earlier this month to express their concerns over the administration’s handling of the Israeli-Palestinian war and demand answers on the U.S.’s strategy for minimizing civilian deaths in Gaza, and what the region would look like after the war, according to new Washington Post report.
The report details concerns among White House aides over the administration’s unwavering support for Israel, which has unleashed a brutal bombardment of Gaza since Oct. 7.
That concern extended to a separate meeting between Palestinian Americans and White House aides, according to the Post. After the group said Biden would lose Arab and Muslim votes over its war handling, a White House official said Biden was merely trying to prevent World War III.
The thousands of civilian casualties and desperate humanitarian conditions have alarmed Arab allies, but also stirred an extraordinary level of criticism from within the Biden administration.
“I’m stunned by the intensity,” said Aaron David Miller, who worked as an adviser on Arab-Israeli relations during a 25 year tenure at the US State Department.
Several internal memos have been sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken through a channel, established after the Vietnam war, which allows employees to register disapproval of policy.
“I’ve never seen anything quite like this.”
An open letter is also said to be circulating at the Agency for International Development (USAID). Another has been dispatched to the White House by political appointees and staff members representing dozens of government agencies. Another to members of Congress by staffers on Capitol Hill.
An administration official has told the BBC that these concerns are very real and there are active discussions about them.
At a minimum, the letters are asking that President Biden demand an immediate ceasefire, and push Israel much harder to allow for more humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.
More than 15,000 have been killed in Gaza , 40 % of which are children killed by Israel since that attack, according to the latest figure from the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry. Israel has said it is trying to minimise civilian casualties in the war in Gaza but has not been successful, blaming this on Hamas.
The high number of Palestinian deaths is a “font of the dismay” in the administration, according to Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, a former US diplomat who is now president of the Middle East Policy Council.
The administration’s support for the Israeli military operation appears for many “far too much of a one-sided position for the US government”, she said.
Arab and Muslim Americans overwhelmingly backed Biden in 2020 and were expected to again in 2024 .
But in multiple battleground states that Biden won with thin margins last time, a growing chorus of community leaders say his handling of the war in Gaza and Islamophobia at home jeopardize his path to victory in the Electoral College, with many Muslim American and Arab American voters saying they plan to either stay home next November, vote for a write-in or a third-party presidential candidate, or simply leave the top of the ticket blank.
The daily Beast/ BBC/ YL
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