February, 04 2025, 02:14pm EDT
Suspend Arms Transfers to End US Complicity in Israeli Abuses
US-Supplied Weapons Linked to Israel’s Atrocities in Gaza
The United States will be complicit in the Israeli government’s grave violations in Gaza so long as it continues to provide arms and other military aid, Human Rights Watch said today ahead of a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israeli authorities have committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide during the country’s assault on Gaza.
The US has provided unprecedented security assistance and arms sales to Israel since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Despite the Israeli forces’ repeated use of US weapons to carry out apparent war crimes in Gaza, the Biden administration continued to transfer arms, making the US complicit in their unlawful use.
“If President Trump wants to break with the Biden administration’s complicity in the Israeli government’s atrocities in Gaza, he should immediately suspend arms transfers to Israel,” said Bruno Stagno, chief advocacy officer at Human Rights Watch. “Trump said the hostilities in Gaza were ‘not our war’ but ‘their war,’ but unless the US ends its military support, Gaza will also be Trump’s war.”
US military assistance to Israel has increased since October 7, 2023, at least $17.9 billion in the year since, a Brown University study found. In March 2024, the Washington Post reported that the US had approved more than 100 military sales to Israel since the previous October, “amounting to thousands of precision-guided munitions, small-diameter bombs, bunker busters, small arms and other forms of lethal aid.” In early January 2025, the Biden administration informed Congress of an additional planned $8 billion sale of arms to Israel.
Gaza’s Health Ministry has reported that Israeli military operations in Gaza have resulted in the killing at least 47,000 Palestinians, and most likely many more. Israeli authorities have forcibly displaced virtually all of Gaza’s population, used starvation of civilians as a weapon of war, deliberately deprived civilians of water, electricity, medical aid, and other objects necessary for their survival, and damaged or destroyed Gaza’s essential infrastructure and the majority of homes, schools, universities, and hospitals. These actions amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide.
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and dozens of media reports, including by CNN, NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and AFP, have identified US weapons being used in Israeli attacks that killed and maimed scores of civilians and aid workers and most likely violated international humanitarian law.
Despite overwhelming evidence of the Israeli government’s disregard for the laws of war, then-President Biden did not stop US weapons shipments to Israel, beyond withholding at least one shipment of 2,000 pound bombs in the context of its “concern” about their use in the then-planned assault on Rafah in southern Gaza.
The International Law Commission said in a 2001 report that a state that significantly aids or assists another state in an internationally wrongful act is responsible for doing so if it does so with knowledge of the circumstances of the act. The commission noted: “For instance, a State may incur responsibility if it ... provides material aid to a State that uses the aid to commit human rights violations.”
Biden administration officials were well aware of the mounting evidence that Israeli forces have committed grave abuses in Gaza, including with US weapons. Human rights and humanitarian organizations and independent experts have submittedextensive documentation to the US government, and civil servants have said they submitted similar reports internally.
The International Court of Justice concluded that claims South Africa put forward in its case against Israel under the Genocide Convention of 1948 were “plausible” and the World Court’s provisional measures to safeguard Palestinians put the Biden administration on notice about the risk of atrocity crimes in Gaza.
Biden administration officials spoke openly about the Israeli government’s abuses. In November 2023, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that “far too many Palestinians have been killed” by Israeli forces. A month later, President Biden described Israeli government attacks as “indiscriminate.” He later said that, days after the October 7 attacks, he told Netanyahu that Israel “can’t be carpet bombing” Gaza.
The Biden administration’s report to Congress in May 2024 on National Security Memorandum 20 concluded that Israeli security forces had most likely used US-provided arms in manners “inconsistent with its IHL [international humanitarian law] obligations.” Biden went further in a May 2024 CNN interview: “civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which [Israel goes] after population centers,” which factored into withholding 2,000-pound bombs.
President Trump has approved releasing the 2,000-pound bombs to Israeli forces and called to “clean out that whole thing [Gaza],” which would amount to an alarming escalation in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza.
US officials could also be found criminallyliable for “aiding and abetting” war crimes by Israeli forces. US forces have provided extensive intelligence that has been used in Israel’s targeting operations and closely coordinated with Israeli forces on planning military operations, as US officials haveacknowledged. Biden in October 2024 said that he “directed Special Operations personnel and our intelligence professionals to work side-by-side with their Israeli counterparts to help locate and track [Yahya] Sinwar and other Hamas leaders hiding in Gaza. With our intelligence help, the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] relentlessly pursued Hamas’s leaders.”
Multiplenewsagencies have reported that the US military, Central Intelligence Agency, and other US agencies have deployed troops and other operatives to work with Israeli authorities, including providing signals intelligence (information gleaned from surveillance of telecommunications) and “ground-penetrating radar.” The US also flew surveillance drones in the early days of the hostilities; while US officials linked this to hostage recovery, they have reportedly acknowledged that these efforts were invariably “intertwined” with the search for Hamas leaders.
The Intercept reported that the US Air Force in November 2023 sent US officers “to provide satellite intelligence to the Israelis for the purpose of offensive targeting.” US intelligence reportedly helped identify the location of four hostages whom Israeli forces rescued in a May 2024 operation that killed, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, 274 Palestinians. US intelligence also reportedly stated that Palestinian armed groups operated within Al-Shifa Hospital, which Israeli authorities subsequently attacked, killing scores of people.
The Israeli government and Hamas reached a ceasefire agreement in January 2025, but Palestinian civilians in Gaza continue to suffer from a dire humanitarian situation and extensive damage from Israel’s unlawful blockade and assault.
The US should suspend military assistance and arms sales to Israel so long as Israeli forces commit widespread, serious abuses amounting to war crimes against Palestinian civilians with impunity. Given US provision of weapons used to carry out apparent war crimes, the US should also contribute to reparation and reconstruction in Gaza, Human Rights Watch said.
Providing military assistance to Israel also violates US law. Several statutes, including Section 502B of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act, prohibit arms transfers to countries that do not adhere to the laws of armed conflict. Another section of that law bars the US from sending weapons to any country that “prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance,” which multiple US government agencies said Israel had done and Human Rights Watch had documented.
“President Trump said that the US will measure success in part by ‘the wars we never get into,’ but he promptly lifted a pause on 2,000-pound bomb shipments to the Israeli government,” Stagno said. “Trump should instead be taking steps to end support for Israeli government atrocities in Gaza.”
Human Rights Watch is one of the world's leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. By focusing international attention where human rights are violated, we give voice to the oppressed and hold oppressors accountable for their crimes. Our rigorous, objective investigations and strategic, targeted advocacy build intense pressure for action and raise the cost of human rights abuse. For 30 years, Human Rights Watch has worked tenaciously to lay the legal and moral groundwork for deep-rooted change and has fought to bring greater justice and security to people around the world.
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