U.S. diplomacy is at its best when American diplomats are informed by the diverse perspectives of leaders, foreign service officers, and private sector citizens. Serious diplomacy requires more than talking with friends and like-minded groups. It must also include efforts to engage freely and frankly with adversaries and those who might wish the United States ill.
In places such as the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, long before Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the United States fell far short of that ideal.
It has rarely engaged with openness and sincerity. Diplomats long ago promised that Washington could be fair and even-handed with the Palestinians. The Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995 envisioned Palestinian autonomy, Israeli military withdrawal, a five-year process of disengagement, and final status talks leading to peace. It was believed that the U.S. government would open a consulate in Palestine and be amenable to talking without restrictions or preconditions to advance peace. However, these goals were never fully actualized.
Unfortunately, the U.S. government has increased restrictions on diplomats and humanitarian workers in the region, undermining their ability to do their jobs effectively. Many of those who manage development or humanitarian assistance efforts in the occupied Palestinian territories, particularly the Gaza Strip, have personal experience with the U.S. government’s “no-contact policy.” This policy morphed out of the long-standard Western government line that “we won’t negotiate ransoms with terrorists” and the history of foreign terrorist organization (FTO) designations since the post-9/11 executive orders of then-President George W. Bush.
The Bush administration designated Hamas as an FTO after it won Gazan elections in 2006. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) issued policy directive Mission Order 21 soon after, prohibiting virtually any assistance or support by U.S.-led organizations to groups even minimally connected to the Hamas-run de facto authority in Gaza.
The U.S. State Department and USAID lawyers, in a series of agency partner meetings and shared legal opinions, further interpreted that order to bar contact with any governmental authority in Gaza, including any civil governmental ministry or office.
In late 2018, the U.S. Congress passed the Taylor Force Act, which was signed into law by then-President Donald Trump. It barred any U.S. government assistance to the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority unless it stopped compensation payments to the family members of Palestinians who carried out lone wolf attacks against Israeli targets and citizens and were subsequently detained or killed by Israeli forces. The act overturned U.S. government assistance in the West Bank and Gaza, curtailed development and humanitarian aid, and ended meaningful efforts to engage with Palestinian authorities.
By depriving Palestinians of broad-based agriculture, trade promotion, water infrastructure, and economic development funds, U.S. policies impoverished vulnerable Palestinian communities and marginalized any possible rise of moderate alternatives, promoting the agendas of extremists on both sides. Palestinians endured a rolling annexation of their lands, as Israeli settlers demolished homes and engaged in violent activities against Palestinian communities with a total absence of accountability.
These U.S. policies cost dearly in terms of blood and lives, both Israeli and Palestinian, and enabled lawlessness by Israeli forces and civilians in the occupied Palestinian territories. It fed further hopelessness for Gazans caught between Hamas and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in what became the world’s largest outdoor prison: The Gaza International Airport was closed in 2001 after a little more than two years of operation, Gazan land access was cut off almost completely, the number of Gazans with work permits allowing employment in Israel dropped more than 90 percent to below 10,000 people, and access to the sea for fishing was limited to areas within six nautical miles of the coast. Few, if any, humanitarian medical cases were allowed parole and care in Israeli hospitals. Commercial trade with the outside world was restricted.
Studies have challenged the efficacy and effectiveness of the non-negotiation approach, particularly when broadened from its aim of avoiding terrorist ransoms to include the withholding of all funds to any FTO designees.
As a U.S. senior foreign service officer, these counterproductive policies often constrained my team in Gaza. We engaged in expensive and time-consuming vetting operations on organizations and staff to avoid the slightest possibility of linkage with the de facto authorities. We were greatly limited in potential partners among small-scale civil society and community-based organizations.
Health care activities, even those addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, could not refer to Ministry of Health clinics and hospitals. We could not support government-run vaccination or case-tracking efforts. Psychosocial counseling and treatment could not be linked with any government mental health providers.
Nongovernmental organizations implementing programs in the occupied Palestinian territories have further been harassed and victimized through the unintended use of U.S. laws such as the False Claims Act. Under this Civil War-era law, modified by Congress in 1943, 1986 and 2010, private entities and citizens can file qui tam actions alleging that target groups “defrauded” the federal government, effectively turning the plaintiffs into bounty hunters.
This has been applied aggressively as “lawfare” against charitable grantees and nonprofits managing U.S. development and humanitarian assistance in the occupied Palestinian territories. If a suit succeeds, then the private instigator may receive up to 30 percent of the government’s award.
As a result of the no-contact policy, FTO designations, and U.S. laws, several international NGOs were sued in U.S. courts by anti-Palestinian right-wing activists and accused of giving material aid to Hamas, including organizations such as Diakonia Sweden, Oxfam Great Britain, the Carter Center, and Norwegian People’s Aid.
For example, U.S.-based pro-Israel activists from the Zionist Advocacy Center and NGO Monitor found photos showing low-level Gaza Health Ministry staff at a table for a Norwegian People’s Aid-managed democracy and health conference. Water bottles visible in the photo were then described as illegal “material aid.” The 2015 suit led to a 2018 pre-trial settlement with no admission of guilt.
The Zionist Advocacy Center threatened other nuisance lawsuits against international NGOs and nonprofit charities seeking to provide humanitarian assistance worldwide, including in Gaza and the West Bank. While many of these suits were ultimately dismissed in federal court, in multiple cases, charitable organizations shelled out millions of dollars in legal fees to fight nuisance claims. In other cases, they reportedly paid millions to settle cases to avoid legal risks.
These restrictions are exquisitely one-sided: There are virtually no penalties or constraints on U.S. assistance to Israel, even as Israeli government policies have promoted illegal settlements, and Israeli security forces have allowed settlers to act with impunity in killing unarmed Palestinians and attacking Palestinian villages and orchards.
Since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks against Israel, the impact of these U.S. restrictions has become more apparent and damaging. There is no proportionality or equivalence in treatment: The U.S. government doesn’t designate pro-Israel groups as FTOs even when some of them demonstrably support or instigate settler violence.
In a rare punitive move in December 2023, the U.S. State Department announced some visa restrictions on Israeli settlers engaged in violence on the West Bank, following the controversial entry of Israel in the U.S. visa waiver program. However, little concrete accountability has been observed since, with virtually no consequences for IDF units also allegedly violating Palestinian rights and abetting settler violence.
The Biden administration and the State Department are only willing to engage indirectly with Hamas. However, this is ineffective and not a substitute for serious great-power diplomacy. As many global humanitarian organizations have noted, Washington can’t claim that it opposes the indiscriminate bombing of innocents, elderly, and children when the U.S. government allows the IDF to act with total impunity.
Moreover, it is indefensible not to block, sanction, and punish the attacks on Palestinian villages and communities across the West Bank and the continued expansion of illegal settlements. All these actions have been met with the mildest of reproaches from the White House and from Secretary of State Antony Blinken, but with no consequences or accountability for the IDF or the government of Israel.
In addition, processes set up to provide accountability have been disregarded. The so-called Leahy Laws aim to stop military aid and weapons flowing from the United States to units and foreign security forces accused of committing gross human rights abuses, specifically restricting weapons provided under foreign military financing.
Even so, the Pentagon has provided Israel for decades with more than $3 billion in weapons annually, a figure that has increased since the start of Israel’s war with Hamas on Oct. 7. Since then, the United States has enacted legislation providing at least $12.5 billion in military aid to Israel, including $3.8 billion from a bill in March 2024 and $8.7 billion from a supplemental appropriations act in April 2024. Yet the State Department has sidestepped calls for action and review by its own employees, even while acknowledging persistent reports of human rights abuses in the West Bank and Gaza.
Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic nominee in the upcoming presidential election, has not signaled a substantial shift. In her statements, she always prefaces mild calls to stop the war in Gaza with assertions that she unrestrictedly supports Israel’s right to defend itself. This formulaic fallback has not been meaningfully questioned within the Biden administration or the Harris campaign.
Few U.S. officials will acknowledge that Israel crossed the line of legitimate self-defense following the Oct. 7 attack when it began launching unrestricted military operations, primarily harming Palestinian civilians. By January 2024, there were few untouched military targets remaining in northern Gaza near Gaza City and in the southern cities of Khan Younis and Rafah.
In June, IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari admitted to Israeli Channel 13 that the IDF could not fully destroy Hamas. Yet now, almost a year after Oct. 7, Gazan noncombatants must still attempt to survive with constant evacuations from one so-called safe humanitarian zone to another—surrounded by death, destruction, and terror.
Blinken has made at least nine trips to the region, ostensibly in pursuit of peace. Legal prohibitions on weapons that could be used to target civilians, such as the Leahy Laws, are routinely ignored by Blinken’s State Department when it comes to Israel.
In mid-September, Aysenur Eygi, a 26-year-old Turkish American activist was shot in the head and killed by an Israeli soldier at a protest against Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank. While U.S. President Joe Biden quickly called for full accountability, Blinken accepted an IDF preliminary investigation that was challenged by the Washington Post and other witnesses and has demurred in insisting on a U.S.-led independent investigation.
Eygi was the third American killed by the IDF in the West Bank since the war started, yet her death has received far less attention from policymakers than the deaths of U.S. citizens caused by Palestinian militants. This is gross negligence and diplomatic malfeasance.
Israel’s destruction of Gaza will endanger both Israeli and Palestinian lives for years to come, perpetuating endless, unpredictable cycles of violence. The consequences for U.S. diplomacy are tragic. By not holding both sides accountable, utilizing the available tools to curb or block the fighting with U.S. arms, and talking directly with those holding hostages, Washington’s diplomatic efforts have surrendered all moral authority and credibility.
The White House and Congress must seriously reevaluate the consequences and impact of U.S. laws and policy measures—such as USAID Mission Order 21, the no-contact policy with FTOs, and the Taylor Force Law—that thoroughly undermine and weaken U.S. diplomacy. They should be repealed and be countered with objective application of Leahy Law sanctions on culpable IDF units, leaders, and those providing them political cover.
