The US is expected to invoke the Leahy Law, a landmark congressional act, to block military aid to an Israeli army unit due to credible evidence of gross human rights abuses committed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank before the Gaza conflict began six months ago.
The move would mark the first time that a US administration has invoked a landmark 27-year-old congressional act against an Israeli military unit. It comes at a time when US-Israeli relationship is strained due to civilian casualties and suffering in Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
The Leahy Law, championed by former Vermont senator Patrick Leahy in the 1990s, provides a tool for the US to withhold military aid and training from foreign security units that are guilty of extrajudicial killings, rapes, torture, and other flagrant human rights abuses.
The law requires an automatic cutoff of aid to a military unit if the State Department finds credible evidence that it has committed gross abuses. A second Leahy law says the same for Defense Department training of foreign militaries.
Israel says its security forces investigate abuses and its courts hold offenders accountable. However, rights groups long have accused US 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 behaviour by foreign forces.
According to 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, no US government has previously invoked the law against Israel.
Israel can potentially address the cutoff through a 2021 treaty in which it stipulated it wouldn’t share US military aid with any unit that the US had deemed credibly guilty of gross human rights abuses. Additionally, US law allows for a waiver of the Leahy law if the secretary of state determines the government involved is taking effective steps to bring the offenders in the targeted unit to justice.
Despite the aid cutoff, the US continues to provide billions of dollars of funding and arms to Israel, including a new $26 billion package to support Israel’s defense and provide relief for the growing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.
