According to State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller, senior US and Israeli officials will meet in early December for the first time as part of a new route that Washington asked to voice concerns over civilian casualties in Israel’s attack in Gaza.
In a letter to Israel’s government dated October 13, officials in President Joe Biden’s administration claimed that the prior routes were not functioning and requested a new channel to meet virtually by the end of the month, according to Reuters.
A first meeting has been planned to collect information on situations involving Israel’s use of US-provided weaponry that are “a cause of concern or a cause of question,” Miller stated during a news briefing. He would not specify the location of the encounter.
Miller went on to say, “We will continue to take all the information we gather and feed it into our processes, both our policy making processes and the judgments that we have to make about potential violations of international humanitarian law.”
Miller did not promise to any assessments ending before Biden’s departure from office on January 20 and declined to comment on whether the new channel would speed up US government evaluations of any Israeli violations of international law.
According to him, “we have to make some tough decisions, but our work is already proceeding as fast as we can.”
