Another senior State official resigns over Gaza, taking aim at aid

The official, Stacy Gilbert, resigned Tuesday. She told colleagues that the State Department was wrong to conclude Israel had not obstructed aid to Gaza.


By John Hudson and Michael Birnbaum

Updated May 28, 2024

A career State Department official involved in the Biden administration’s contentious debates over Israel’s conduct in Gaza resigned this week, citing disagreements with a recently published U.S. government report that claimed that Israel was not impeding humanitarian assistance to Gaza, two officials told The Washington Post.

The outgoing official, Stacy Gilbert, served in the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. Gilbert sent an email to staff Tuesday explaining her view that the State Department was wrong to conclude that Israel had not obstructed humanitarian assistance to Gaza, officials who read the letter said.

The cause for resignation is unusual in that it speaks to internal dissent over a hotly disputed report that the Biden administration relied on to justify continuing to send billions of dollars of weapons to Israel.

Gilbert, through an associate, did not respond to a request for comment.

When asked about her resignation, a State Department spokesman said that “we have made clear we welcome diverse points of view and believe it makes us stronger.”

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel issue, said the department would continue to seek out a wide range of view points for the benefit of the policymaking process.

“On the day when the White House announced that the latest atrocity in Rafah did not cross its red line, this resignation demonstrates that the Biden Administration will do anything to avoid the truth,” Josh Paul, the first State Department official to resign over Gaza policy, wrote on LinkedIn after this article was published online.

“This is not just a story of bureaucratic complicity or ineptitude — there are people signing off on arms transfers, people drafting arms transfer approval memos, people turning a blind eye,” Paul wrote. People “who could be speaking up, people who have an awesome responsibility to do good, and a lifelong commitment to human rights — whose choice is to let the bureaucracy function as though it were business as usual.”

The report Gilbert objected to was published this month in response to a presidential memo known as NSM-20.

President Biden issued the memo in February after coming under pressure from congressional Democrats concerned about the rising death toll in Gaza. It required the State Department to assess whether Israel’s use of U.S. weapons in Gaza violated U.S. or international humanitarian law and included an examination of whether humanitarian aid had been deliberately obstructed.

The report — the product of weeks of discussion within the State and Defense departments — found that while “aid remains insufficient,” the United States does not “currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.”

Gilbert, whose views were echoed by the vast majority of aid and humanitarian organizations, said Israel was impeding the aid from reaching civilians in Gaza. Aid flows have continued to be constricted in the weeks since the report was issued. But the report found insufficient grounds to halt aid to Israel.

Heavy machinery is used to dispose of rotten eggs, which had spoiled this month as part of aid packages for Gaza while the Rafah border crossing remains closed. (Reuters)

The State Department spokesperson said that “we continue to press the government of Israel to avoid harming civilians and urgently expand humanitarian access to and inside Gaza. This includes facilitating provision of lifesaving assistance, allowing fuel entry, and ensuring safe freedom of movement for humanitarian workers.”

Along with Paul, a handful of Biden administration officials have resigned since the conflict began in October, including Annelle Sheline, who worked on human rights issues, and Hala Rharrit, one of the department’s Arabic-language spokespeople. Still more have expressed unhappiness with administration policy by sending cables via the internal dissent channel, a process intended to allow diplomats to articulate disagreement without fear of retribution.

After Rharrit resigned, she said that as the months of the conflict progressed, it became more clear that internal discussion about U.S.-Israel policy was unwelcome, unlike almost every other subject during her 18-year career at the State Department.

The Biden administration paused the transfer of some bombs and precision guidance kits to register its concerns over a potential large-scale invasion of Rafah. But it has left most weapons flows untouched and has said Israel’s actions in the crowded border city do not yet cross the president’s “red line” despite the rising death toll and increasing military operations.