Israel “without a doubt” had committed war crimes in Gaza, former Biden administration senior official Matthew Miller said.
“I don’t think it’s a genocide, but I think it is without a doubt true that Israel has committed war crimes,” he told Sky News on Monday.
“I think what is almost certainly not an open question is that there have been individual incidents that have been war crimes where Israeli soldiers, members of the Israeli military, have committed war crimes.”
Miller said his job was to express the opinions of the Biden administration, which had not found such war crimes, and not his personal views on the conflict.
Debates in the Biden administration on how to handle Israel-Hamas War
He also revealed there were massive disagreements within the Biden administration over US-Israeli relationships in light of the Israel-Hamas War.
“There were disagreements all along the way about how to handle policy. Some of those were big disagreements, some of those were little disagreements,” he said.
The official also hinted at verifying rumors that secretary of state Antony Blinken had been at odds with president Joe Biden on both Gaza and Ukraine policies.
“I’ll probably wait and let the secretary speak for himself... but I will say, speaking generally, look, it is true about every senior official in government that they don’t win every policy fight that they enter into. And what you do is you make your best case to the president,” Miller said.
“The administration did debate, at times, whether and when to cut off weapons to Israel. You saw us in the spring of 2024 stop the shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel because we did not believe they would use those in a way that was appropriate in Gaza.”
Miller also hinted that the US may have had greater insight into the internal happenings of Hamas than what was publicly known.
There were debates about whether to suspend other arms deliveries, and you saw at times us hold back certain arms while we negotiated the use of those arms... but we found ourselves in this really tough position, especially in that time period when it really came to a head... we were at a place where – I’m thinking of the way I can appropriately say this – the decisions and the thinking of Hamas leadership were not always secret to the United States and to our partners,” Miller said.
Hamas’s perception of support for Gaza, including pro-Palestinian protests across the US and discussions on withholding Israel, was known to encourage the terror group to hold out against a ceasefire agreement, he admitted.
“It was clear to us in that period that there was a time when our public discussion of withholding weapons from Israel, as well as the protests on college campuses in the United States, and the movement of some European countries to recognize the state of Palestine – appropriate discussions, appropriate decisions – protests are appropriate – but all of those things together were leading the leadership of Hamas to conclude that they didn’t need to agree to a ceasefire, they just needed to hold out for a little bit longer, and they could get what they always wanted,” Miller said, noting how the terror group perpetuated the conflict in response to international support.
Miller also said he felt the Biden administration could have done more to encourage a ceasefire, particularly by applying pressure to Israel.
“Now, the thing that I look back on, that I will always ask questions of myself about, and I think this is true for others in government, is in that intervening period between the end of May and the middle of January [2025], when thousands of Palestinians were killed, innocent civilians who didn’t want this war, had nothing to do with it, was there more that we could, could have done to pressure the Israeli government to agree to that ceasefire? I think at times there probably was,” he said.