Two more US officials have resigned over the Gaza war, saying that the Biden administration is not telling the truth about Israeli obstruction of humanitarian assistance to more than two million Palestinians trapped and starving in the tiny coastal strip.
According to the Washington Post, Gilbert took issue in particular with a formal state department report to Congress on 10 May, noting that Israel “did not fully cooperate” in the first months of the Gaza war but that it had “significantly increased humanitarian access” more recently.
“I’m aware that there are other resignations pending in the near future from officials with similar concerns in their own areas of work,” said Paul, now a senior adviser at Dawn, a group advocating democracy and human rights in the Middle East and north Africa.
The resignations have come as famine is spreading in Gaza, with only a trickle of humanitarian assistance arriving through land crossings controlled by Israel, and the collapse of a US-made pier intended for food deliveries, severely damaged by a Mediterranean storm earlier this week.
The US president had threatened to cut off the supply of arms for use in any Rafah offensive, but his administration has not delivered on that threat, arguing that the assault on the city did not amount to a major operation as it did not involve large numbers of troops.
Smith said that the breaking point for his career as a state department contractor came last week, when he had been scheduled to present a paper to an internal USAID conference about maternal and child mortality in Gaza and the West Bank.
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