This week, the administration of US President Joe Biden continued to avoid accusations regarding Israel's actions in Gaza, saying that it (Israel) does not commit acts of genocide. But the administration acknowledged that it had not made any formal assessment of whether Israel was violating international humanitarian law.

The lack of any real-time assessments of Israel's behavior and methods in its devastating war on the besieged Gaza Strip has drawn intense criticism from inside and outside the government, as President Joe Biden has shown no signs of wanting to change approach, according to media sources in Washington.

Questions about this position were raised in plenary sessions last week, in the wake of South Africa launching a genocide case against Israel in the United Nations Supreme Court, according to Politico.

According to the website, “The United States is confident that Israel is not committing any ethnic cleansing or genocide in Gaza, as a senior administration official said, and that “if you only look at what Israel is doing, you will find that it is not systematically targeting civilians.” The United States has came to this conclusion in part after reviewing press reports and conversations with Israeli officials about their military operations.

It is noteworthy that US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said last Wednesday in response to press questions that the United States has not witnessed any acts of genocide committed by Israel in Gaza. When Miller was asked the next day how the United States reached this decision, he said he would not discuss internal deliberations or speak to any formal process that had been launched.

On the same day, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby answered a question at the White House about how the United States knows whether Israel is complying with the laws of war, saying: “I am not aware of any kind of formal assessment that the United States government is conducting to analyze the extent of our partner’s compliance to international law, but we haven't seen anything that would convince us that we need to take a different approach in terms of trying to help Israel defend itself." This may impede sending large quantities of weapons and ammunition to Israel to continue its devastating attacks on Palestinian civilian areas in the Gaza Strip.

These and other comments led to more criticism of the US administration's policy towards Israel.

Politico quotes Matthew Doss, executive vice president at the Progressive Center for International Policy, as saying: “The administration issued an assessment of Russian war crimes within a month of the invasion of Ukraine, and the United States has much greater visibility and knowledge of Israeli operations.” So to claim that they were unable to make such an assessment on Gaza after three months demonstrates naivety or truly dispensation with others.

It is noteworthy that the Biden administration is now speaking more forcefully about the need to protect civilians than it did after Israel launched its war following the Hamas attack on October 7, and has put some pressure on Israel to open a second crossing into Gaza, allowing more humanitarian aid to enter the Strip, which Its population is 2.3 million people. “American officials say that Israel did not pursue a comprehensive invasion of Gaza after the US administration warned of the consequences, also pointing out that Israel’s recent shift to a more targeted campaign is the result of weeks of intense diplomacy,” according to Politco.

But Washington said little about the intentions of some senior officials in Benjamin Netanyahu's government. Bezalel Smotrich, Israel's finance minister, who is not a member of the war cabinet, has repeatedly called on Palestinians to leave Gaza. “What needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage immigration,” he told Israeli Army Radio last month. “If there were 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not two million Arabs, the whole discussion the next day would be completely different.”

Israel is also in talks with Congo and other countries regarding a “voluntary migration” plan for Palestinians in Gaza, with Netanyahu recently telling members of his party (according to The Times of Israel) that “our problem is [finding] countries willing to absorb the population of Gaza, and we are working on that.”

The Biden administration's defense of Israeli actions, while also saying that it did not look deeply into military operations, confuses many of President Biden's supporters.

On Friday, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) became the latest Democratic member of Congress to suggest that the United States impose restrictions on military aid to Israel because of its conduct in the war.

“The United States cannot write a blank check to a right-wing government that has shown an appalling disregard for Palestinian lives,” the Senate Armed Services Committee member wrote on X.