The US poised to block aid to Israeli military unit citing the Leahy Law. Explore the implications and context of this decision
Israel expects its top ally, the United States, to announce as soon as
Monday that it’s blocking military aid to an Israeli army unit over gross human
rights abuses in the Israeli-occupied West Bank before the war in Gaza began
six months ago.
The move would mark the first time in the decades-long partnership
between the two countries that a U.S. administration has invoked a landmark
27-year-old congressional act known as the Leahy law against an Israeli
military unit.
It comes as the U.S.-Israeli relationship is under growing strain over
civilian deaths and suffering in Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
Former Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy championed legislation that became the
Leahy law in the 1990s, saying the U.S. needed a tool to block American
military aid and training to foreign security units guilty of extrajudicial
killings, rapes, torture and other flagrant human rights abuses.
Other U.S. laws are supposed to deal with other circumstances in which
abuses would obligate blocking military support. Those include a February 2023
order by President Joe Biden dictating that “no arms transfer will be
authorized” when the U.S. finds that more likely than not a foreign power would
use them to commit serious violations of the laws of war or human rights or
other crimes, including “serious acts of violence against children.”
Rights groups long have accused U.S. administrations, including Biden’s,
of shirking rigorous investigations of allegations of Israeli military killings
and other abuses against Palestinians to avoid invoking such laws aimed at
conditioning military aid to lawful behavior by foreign forces.
Regularly when it comes to U.S. security assistance to countries in the
former Soviet Union and in Central and South America and Africa. Not often when
it comes to strategically vital U.S. allies.
In 2022, for instance, the U.S. found sufficient evidence of abuses to
trigger the Leahy law for police and other forces in Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan,
Mexico and the Caribbean nation of Saint Lucia.
The administration also has the option of notifying Congress of Leahy
law incidents in classified settings to avoid embarrassing key partners.
Administration veterans vouch that no U.S. government has previously
invoked it against Israel, says Sarah Elaine Harrison, a former Defense
Department attorney who worked on Leahy law issues and now is a senior analyst
with the International Crisis Group.
WHAT CAN ISRAEL DO ABOUT THE CUTOFF?
Harrison points to a 2021 treaty in which Israel stipulated it wouldn’t
share U.S. military aid with any unit that the U.S. had deemed credibly guilty
of gross human rights abuses.
U.S. law points to one way out for an offender: A secretary of state can
waive the Leahy law if he or she determines the government involved is taking
effective steps to bring the offenders in the targeted unit to justice.
The U.S. still sends billions of dollars of funding and arms to Israel,
including a new $26 billion package to support Israel’s defense and and provide
relief for the growing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. The Senate is expected
to pass that this week and Biden says he will sign.
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