World Geostrategic Interview with Josh Paul on the Israeli military’s alleged human rights violations and war crimes in Gaza, with U.S. complicity, what Israel should have done differently in response to the Hamas attack, whether the two-state solution is still a viable option for resolving the conflict, the goals and credibility of U.S. foreign policy in the region, and the role of the U.S. defense industry.
Josh Paul served for more than 11 years as director of the Office of Political-Military Affairs, responsible for U.S. defense diplomacy, security assistance, and arms transfers. In October 2023, he resigned from the State Department because of his disagreement with the Biden administration’s decision to rush lethal military assistance to Israel in its war against Gaza. He previously worked on security sector reform in both Iraq and the West Bank, with additional roles in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the U.S. Army Staff, and as a congressional aide to Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY). He is currently a Non-Resident Fellow at DAWN and received the Callaway 2023 award for civic courage.
Q1 – You were helping to send U.S. arms abroad for eleven years as director of the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, then you made headlines for your resignation from the State Department in October 2023 because of your disagreement with the Biden Administration’s decision to rush the delivery of lethal weapons to Israel to support its military attack in Gaza. The United States has been overloading the Middle East with weapons for decades, providing Israel with billions of dollars of sophisticated military equipment every year, can you summarize here the main reasons for your stepping down in the specific context of the current war in Gaza?
A1 – I resigned last October for three main reasons. First, because of the scale and scope of the harm that was being unleashed through the use of American weaponry, and the willingness – indeed, the explicit direction – to continue to provide that weaponry as quickly as possible. Already by the time I resigned over 3,700 Palestinians had been killed in Gaza, and it was clear that there was no end to the killing in sight.
Secondly, while the bombardment of Gaza was the acute reason for my resignation, I also left because I believe we have been pursuing, for several decades, a broken policy when it comes to Israel and Palestine. The United States has been pursuing a policy essentially of ‘security for peace’ – the notion that an Israel that is more secure through the support of American military assistance and arms would be an Israel that would be willing to make the concessions necessary for Palestinian self-determination to emerge, and peace to talk hold. Instead, however, Israel has come to feel so secure, that it has felt it can entirely ignore the Palestinian question, continue its siege of Gaza and its settlement expansions in the West Bank, while looking forward to a future in which it is fully integrated into the broader region. Today we can say that this is obviously false, but to the extent American security assistance contributed to this fallacy, we can say that America holds some responsibility for the events of October 7th itself.
And finally, I resigned because when I tried to raise these issues, there was no interest in pausing for even a moment in our flow of arms to discuss them – no hesitation in the policies, no willingness to discuss. I thought then – as I do now – that the question of the role of American weapons in what has been unfolding the past seven months is an important one to be had, but if it could not be had in government, it would need to be had in the public sphere, and to raise it there, I had to resign.
Q2 – Are Israeli army units responsible for human rights violations and war crimes in Gaza, with the indirect complicity or at least the tacit consent, or non-opposition, of the United States?
A2 – Yes. As the recent report of the Independent Task Force on the Application of National Security Memorandum 20 to Israel identified, there are multiple instances in which we can clearly identify the use of U.S.-provided weapons in Gaza to commit violations of international law – up to and including war crimes. In this regard we see a U.S. complicity in three ways: first, through the continuing provision of those weapons without any conditions on their use, despite the absolute clarity that is available on how they will be used.
Secondly, through the unwillingness of the United States to apply the standards and laws that it is bound by, and indeed applies elsewhere, to assess whether such violations are occuring, whether at the unit level, as is required by the “Leahy Laws” or on a more systematic basis.
Worse still, we also see the U.S. complicity not only in facilitating and enabling these violations, but in proactive steps taken by the Biden Administration and other U.S. officials to shield Israel from accountability, whether within the U.S. legal system, or through posing explicit threats to the U.S. relationship with South Africa, or the broader international rule of law represented by the International Criminal Court.
This complicity not only enables Israeli war crimes through its extension of impunity, but threatens the foundations of the entire international system; one wonders whether if a sovereign court in Europe was to commence proceedings against Israeli officials whether the United States would not even be willing to tear apart the transatlantic alliance in order to shield Benjamin Netanyahu.
Q3 – In the face of the atrocities of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, with the killing of Israeli citizens, the taking of hostages, and the related Iranian threat, what other options could Israel have pursued besides a military invasion of the Gaza Strip and countering Hamas militants there?
A3 – In recent days U.S. Secretary of State Blinken has finally acknowledged, through the Leahy vetting process, that Israeli Security Forces committed gross violations of human rights in the West Bank during the period 2012-2022. In doing so he has recognized what we all know – that history did not start on October 7th, and it is impossible to discuss what Israel should have done after October 7th without discussing what it should not have been doing before October 7th.
That said, even if we start from October 7th as ‘day zero,’ it is clear that there is much Israel could have done differently that would have led to a different outcome than the one we see today. The first thing is that it should have paused, rather than rushing into bombardment. Waiting even for a short time – allowing itself time to mourn, to think, to allow its intelligence time to fix targets, and to prioritize from the start the recovery of hostages, including through negotiations, should all have been steps taken on and beyond October 8th onwards, and indeed it has been shown that Hamas was willing even at that early stage to negotiate over hostage returns.
In terms of attacking Hamas, as Israel has shown with its strike in Lebanon against Saleh Arouri, it has every technical means to locate key targets and to select low-yield munitions that minimize collateral damage. What we have seen in its operations in Gaza is a choice not to use these technical means, but to turn to the use of 2,000 lb bombs – often unguided – as the first option even against targeted individuals, and sometimes even in the absence of a legitimate target. Israel has not needed to impose collective punishment; has not needed to strike humanitarian aid agencies, has not needed to destroy hundreds of thousands of homes.
That it has chosen to do so – and let us make no mistake, its operations in Gaza have been calculated from the outset not to achieve military objectives, but to punish all of the people of Gaza – in addition to causing the vast humanitarian catastrophe and famine we see now in Gaza, has made Israel fundamentally less safe than a more selective, precise, proportionate, discriminate, and tactically patient, campaign would have.
Most importantly of all, Israel should have recognized, and must still come to the recognition, that ultimately the problem it faces, and indeed the root causes of Palestinian resistance to its occupation, are political, and cannot be resolved through force, but only through negotiation and other political means.
Q4 – On May 1, Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Israel to urge a temporary cease-fire agreement in the Gaza Strip, which the Biden administration hopes will turn into a more lasting peace, and also to express U.S. concerns about a possible Israeli offensive in the city of Rafah. Do you think it might actually be possible to end the armed confrontation and find a lasting agreement between the Israeli government and Hamas? In general terms, how could a settlement be found to a crisis, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, that has been unsolvable for decades? U.S. President Joe Biden has pointed out that there can be no return to the pre-Oct. 7 status quo, “When this crisis is over, there has to be a vision of what comes next. And in our view, it has to be a two-state solution”, the U.S. President said at a press conference on October 25. What’s your view? Is the two-state solution still a viable option?
A4 – I labored for many years in my career under the particularly American delusion that every problem has a solution – and that America can provide it. What I learned during my time working in the West Bank during 2008-2009 is that is not always the case, and sometimes the best we can do is to nurture an environment from which, in the future, solutions may emerge – or at the very least, stop making a situation worse.
I do believe that a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not only possible, but necessary – but it is not clear to me that any of the options on the table are feasible at this time, whether in terms of a one-state solution (that would strip Israel of its current self-identified character as a “Jewish and democratic state,” however unsustainable that character will prove to be in the longer term), or in terms of a two-state solution given the decimation of Gaza and the presence of 700,000 settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, with the infrastructure that accompanies them.
So rather than dictating an end state from the outside, I believe we should speak, first, in terms of an objective – Palestinian self-determination, for instance, in whatever form the Palestinian people decide to pursue it. I also agree with those who have argued for a transformation of how we think about pursuing this resolution, from the Oslo “peace process” framing, to a “justice process” that, rather than simply defining the endstate as the absence of conflict, which is what peace is in its most narrow terms, defines it as an expansion of justice, the latter being characterized by equality, and equity.
All of that said, I do believe there are practical steps that must be taken in the immediate term to facilitate such paths forward given the imbalance of power between Israel and Palestine, and we must recognize that the problem at least since Oslo has not been that the conflict is ‘unsolvable,’ but that Israel, as Prime Minister Netanyahu has made clear, has not wanted to solve it. One of these is the immediate recognition of Palestinian statehood by the U.N. Security Council. Again, this is not because I believe that the two-state solution is necessarily the ultimate solution here, but rather that without an imposition of at least equality under international law, for as long as the dynamic remains one of concessions from the occupier to the occupied, we will get nowhere.
Q5 – What are the real goals of U.S. policy in the Middle East? Can you give an assessment of the Biden administration’s strategy for dealing with crises in the region? Could U.S. unconditional support for Israel damage its credibility as leading power in the area?
A5 – I think it’s an oversimplification to think of U.S. foreign policy towards any region as a coherent thing; it is shaped by multiple interests and pressures, both foreign and domestic. That said, at this time it is clear that the four overriding objectives are stability, countering – for lack of a better term – malign influence (from Iran, Russia, and the People’s Republic of China); economic growth, and support to Israel. These objectives are often in conflict with each other, and ultimately reflect the broader nature of today’s United States as a status-quo power – an entity that has reached the maximal point of its global influence and whose main priority appears to be extending that point for as long as possible and preventing its replacement by other powers.
(I should note that this is not an endorsement of those other powers, but rather a grieving on my part that the United States has not, during its apogee, used its incredible global power to strengthen an international system that could sustain, promote, and defend the model of values that it publicly espoused particularly during the early Cold War era, for fear of being subsumed by that system rather than buoyed by it).
I think this yearning for the status quo explains much of American policy towards the Middle East, including the continued desire to remain as the ‘indispensable nation’ even when some of the imperatives that previously shaped regional policy – such as the dependence on Gulf oil – no longer remain, or have at least ebbed significantly. But the problem is, it is a dynamic world, and a policy premised on ‘keeping things the same’ will ultimately be undermined by its own contradictions. It is these tensions that place U.S. support for Israel at odds with its objective of countering foreign influence in the region, given the extreme unpopularity of this support (the ongoing effort for a grand bargain with Saudi Arabia that includes normalization with Israel and defense guarantees from the U.S. are an effort to fly in the face of that trend).
As a result, what we see now is an America stripped of its credibility in the region and in global contexts as well. It is striking that of the three officials to have publicly resigned from the State Department so far, two of them have, in doing so, precisely cited the damage America has done to its credibility, and the impossibility this led to for each in their specific roles of outreach to North Africa on human rights (Dr. Sheline); or public engagement with regional media (Ms. Rharrit).
This loss of credibility, combined with the awful policies that it emerges from, ultimately contribute to instability by creating mutual dependencies between the U.S. and autocrats based on a shared interest in the suppression of popular opinion, deepening the reputational harm, creating fundamentally brittle relationships, and contributing to continued regional instability.
Q6 – The U.S. defense industry earns about $180 billion a year from arms transfers. In your opinion, are arms sales an effective tool for advancing U.S. foreign policy objectives? Or are they more instrumental to the development and profits of the U.S. arms industry?
A6 – I do believe there is an important utility to defense ties between nations, both in terms of the interoperability these afford in times of crisis and conflict, as well as in the relationships they build between militaries – often at a very personal level – and the access they provide to broader policy discussions. But they cannot be the only aspect of a relationship, and when the role of defense cooperation outweighs other aspects, it can be directly harmful. In the case of Israel, in addition to the disincentives U.S. security assistance has created for resolving the conflict with Palestine, the failure has also been to leverage the defense relationship as the diplomatic tool it is intended to be.
There are many who argue that U.S. foreign policy is in hock to the defense lobby. That is not my experience. Certainly defense industry has too strong a voice during the process for reviewing potential arms transfers, but what I have found is that while weapons companies may push a specific sale through over the policy objections of others, or may argue for expanded defense trade with a country, it is exceedingly rare that they weigh in on broader questions of foreign policy beyond seeking to evade regulation or accountability. They are, like ethno-cultural lobbies, human rights lobbies, ideological lobbies, labor unions, and others pushing their various lines in Washington D.C., one of many voices in the foreign policy-making process. It is the role of the President and their Administration to synthesize these inputs and deliver a foreign policy that is in the American interest.
The disaster we see today in the Middle East, as such, may be a product of the warped Washington system in which politics and money often outweigh good policy, but is ultimately a responsibility of the American government, and its leaders. As the sign on President Truman’s desk famously said, “the buck stops here.”
Josh Paul – Non-Resident Fellow at DAWN.
Image Credit: IDF/Reuters