Former U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford, who served as George W. Bush’s ambassador to Algeria and Barack Obama’s ambassador to Syria, said in a recent interview with Spectrum News that he believes the Biden administration is “complicit” in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza that has left over 31,000 Palestinians dead.
“It's very clear that the administration is reluctant to apply some pressure that goes beyond verbal chiding of Israel. And it makes us look a bit like a paper tiger,” Ford said last week of Biden’s failure to apply U.S. law that would require Israel to abide by international law when using U.S.-supplied weaponry. “It's both humiliating because they blow us off, but it also in the end makes us complicit. And that’s not a good thing.”
“It would be very hard, I think, to say the Americans had nothing to do with this. I mean, you're dropping American weaponry there. On some level, the Americans have a share of responsibility,” Ford added.
Ford, who served as a diplomat across the Middle East and Africa under five presidents dating back to the Reagan administration, went on to say there is “absolutely” evidence of war crimes committed by the Israeli military in Gaza, including the killing of hospital staff, the bombings of hospitals, the mass killings of civilians and targeting universities.
“Israelis tend, in many instances with civilians, to fire first, ask questions later,” Ford, who is now a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said. “There's a lot [of evidence of war crimes] and if the International Criminal Court does an investigation, I suspect they're gonna have a lot to work with, unfortunately.”
He stopped short of calling the Israeli war effort in Gaza — which has leveled the territory, left over a million people homeless and killed scores of women and children — a “genocide,” as pro-Palestinian and antiwar politicians and protestors in the U.S. and around the globe have taken to describing it. (Earlier this year, the International Criminal Court, the United Nations' top judicial body, stopped short of mandating a cease-fire in a case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of genocide.)
But he noted Israel’s destruction of universities in Gaza could be evidence of targeting Palestinians’ cultural identity, making “it easier to argue that it is a genocide.”
An Israeli general was censured earlier this week for demolishing Israa University in Gaza in January. But the Israeli Defense Force did not take onus with the action, instead punishing the general for failing to get the proper authorization — authorization, Israeli media reported, higher ranking officers said they would have given him anyway.
The Israelis might better listen to the U.S., which pours billions into the Israeli military and economy every year, if President Joe Biden restricted aid instead of strictly relying on a strategy of diplomatic pressure that has done little to protect Palestinian civilian lives, Ford argued.
“The Americans have done nothing, except to just kind of verbally coach them rather than take material steps that might sober the Israelis,” Ford said. “If Israelis were having some substantial ammunition and logistical problems because the Americans cut off flows of bombs or missiles, et cetera, I think the Israelis would sit up and pay a little more attention. But the Biden administration has chosen not to do that.”
Instead, despite a widening gap between Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden continues to push Congress to give Israel billions more in military aid. A group of Democratic senators this week urged Biden to apply a U.S. law to Israel that bans military assistance for countries that hinders the distribution of humanitarian aid. That’s an approach Ford also supports, he told Spectrum News last week.
“The most logical thing to do is for the administration to apply American law and regulation. After all, the president swears to uphold the Constitution and enforce the law of the land,” Ford said. “Do what they do with other countries: run investigations, run checks to make sure that American weaponry is not being used by a foreign military in a way that violates international law. They do that with lots of other countries. They have been avoiding doing that with the Israelis. So that should change. That's the most elemental thing.”
Beginning his career in the foreign service in 1985, Ford worked in the U.S. embassy in Baghdad during the Iraq War, was appointed ambassador to Algeria in 2006 and was the United State’s last in-country ambassador to Syria before that country descended into a catastrophic civil war. In 2011, as unrest began, the U.S. State Department pulled him out of the country after he had been attacked by a mob of supporters of Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad.
Ford panned Biden’s plan to build a pier in Gaza to help enable U.S. humanitarian aid to get to the Palestinians, an increasingly difficult prospect as Israel has failed to facilitate or actively obstructed the distribution of aid from other nations and international organizations. He spoke to Spectrum News hours before Biden officially announced the move during his State of the Union address.
“For heaven's sakes, we're setting up a port, temporary port in Gaza, because the Israelis never paid attention to the American concerns about humanitarian access. I mean, think about that,” Ford said. “This is our special strategic partner in the Middle East, the biggest single U.S. aid recipient every single year. And yet, we still have to do this because they blew off our concerns about humanitarian aid access. Come on. The president of the United States, publicly, and privately, has been pushing on this.”
“Just blowing off [U.S.] concerns, frankly, is stunning to me. Really shocking,” he added.
Ford argued that getting aid from the pier into Gaza would be an unfeasible task if Israel is unwilling to provide security for aid convoys. He pointed to an incident where Israeli troops fired on Palestinians rushing for food from an aid convoy that left over 100 dead, according to health officials in the Hamas-run territory. Israel denied firing at the starving Gazans, instead claiming they merely fired warning shots.
“You're gonna have chaotic scenes again, unless there's security and I hope the Israelis are going to provide security. I would hate for the United States government to say, ‘gosh, the Israelis aren’t doing it, we better send in the Marines,’” Ford said. “This is not just about getting food onto the beach in Gaza. It's not just about getting trucks approved to cross into Gaza. Even in Gaza itself you still have to have security and that discussion I don't see much of the press. I see a lot more about how many trucks get through than what happens to the trucks after they do get through?”
On Wednesday, Israel announced they plan to push out a large amount of the 1.4 million Palestinians cramped into Rafah, a town in southern Gaza where a majority of the territory’s population has fled since the war began. Clearing out civilians would precede a major military offensive on the town. Biden has said an invasion of Rafah without a solid plan to protect civilian lives would be a “red line” for him, but has yet to detail exactly what crossing such a red line would mean.
Earlier in the day, Ford aired his criticisms on social media, casting doubt Biden’s “red line” means much of anything and arguing the only way forward is to say the U.S. “will halt weapons deliveries, period.”
“I'll believe Biden admin is truly concerned about Palestinian civilians & would press to extend a 6 week ceasefire when (1) it investigates Israeli use of US weapons as US law requires & (2) discloses results & halts deliveries if law then requires,” Ford wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Til then, credibility lacking.”