US says Israeli soldiers abused Palestinians before Hamas attack on October 7 – News

Four of these units have adopted “corrective measures”, which rules out the possibility of US sanctions, and consultations are ongoing with the Israeli government about the fifth, said State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel.

“After a thorough process, we discovered five Israeli units responsible for individual incidents of serious human rights violations,” he said. These behaviors occurred before the October 7 Hamas attack and did not occur in Gaza, he added.

Patel declined to identify the units or say what steps the Israeli government took to deal with them. Some media, however, accuse the “Netzah Yehuda” battalion, made up mainly of Orthodox Jews, of committing the abuses.

US law prohibits the government from funding or arming foreign security forces against whom there are credible allegations of human rights violations. The United States provides military aid to its allies around the world, including Israel.

The Israeli Army has been fighting the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip for seven months. Furthermore, almost daily exchanges of aggression are recorded with the Shiite movement Hezbollah, on the border with Lebanon. Both groups have the support of Iran.

The war exploded on October 7, with the unprecedented attack by Hamas commandos in southern Israel, in which 1,170 people died, mainly civilians, according to an estimate based on official data.

The Islamists kidnapped 250 people and 129 remain trapped in Gaza, of which around 34 died, according to Israeli authorities.

In retaliation, Israel promised to “annihilate” Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007, and launched a military campaign against the territory that has so far left 34,488 people dead, most of them civilians, according to the Islamist government’s Ministry of Health.

So far, all negotiations between the parties have not led to an agreement that includes a ceasefire, the release of Israeli hostages and the sending of more humanitarian aid to alleviate the serious food crisis in Gaza.