The law, comprising one segment covering the State Department and another for the Department of Defence, prohibits the use of US assistance to the units of foreign security forces suspected of committing gross violations of human rights (GVHRs). The proviso for restoring that assistance can only take place if the offending entity in question takes adequate steps to address the violations.

Examples of such violations include torture, extrajudicial killing, prolonged detention without charge and trial, enforced disappearance, rape and, as broadly noted in the Leahy Law’s own definition “other flagrant denials of the right to life, liberty, or the security of the person.”

The action, supported by Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), seeks declaratory and injunctive relief based on Blinken’s “de facto refusal to implement the statute prohibiting US assistance to Israeli security force units about which there is credible information that they have committed gross violations of human rights.”

Blinken’s record when applying the Leahy Law to Israeli units is disturbingly scrappy. In May, for instance, he explained to Congress that the punishments meted out to soldiers and officers in four cases prior to 7 October 2023, were adequate. One example deserves attention, involving an officer in the Shahar Search and Rescue Battalion of the Israeli occupation forces.

The soldier in question shot and killed Ahmed Manasra, an unarmed Palestinian, in March 2019. A plea deal reached between the military prosecutor and the soldier, subsequently approved by a panel of military judges, proved exceedingly generous to the soldier as it was degrading to Manasra: a three-month term of community service, and a three-month suspended sentence. Blinken accordingly found, as outlined in his memorandum of justification, that the Israeli government “is taking effective steps to bring to justice the responsible member of the Shahar Battalion.” It was a decision perplexing to Tim Rieser, a longtime aide to the chief author of the relevant statute, Sen. Patrick Leahy.  Blinken’s justification was inconsistent “with how the law is written and how it was intended to be applied.”

Former State Department officials linked to the original Leahy Law have been less than impressed by the lethargic actions of their former employer. Former Department member Stephen Rickard, who was also a former senior staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, confirms the favourable prejudice within the department towards Israeli units, adopting what he calls a “‘see no evil, hear no evil’ policy”.

“If the State Department will not comply with the law, then it is time for the courts to vindicate the rule of law and order it to do so,” Rickard said.

Former State Department staffer Josh Paul was also candid, saying: “I sat as part of the Israel Leahy Vetting Forum [ILVF] and saw repeatedly cases of gross violations of human rights being brought forward and senior officials being unwilling to act upon them because of fear of political consequences.”

The forum has been more active of late, signalling, according to ProPublica, a marked departure “after years of deferential treatment of Israel”. That said, the lawsuit contends that the ILVF’s vetting operations are, for the most part, “unique, complex, lengthy, high-level”, not to mention “arbitrary and capricious, and is not rationally related to advancing the purpose of the Leahy Law.” This complexity is pure bureaucratic pantomime, intended to mask what is, at heart, a simple policy goal: exempting the conduct of Israeli forces from the level of scrutiny reserved for their international counterparts.

As the lawsuit contends, the State Department “annually vets hundreds of thousands of non-Israeli foreign security force units for compliance with the Leahy Law and ultimately suspends and deems thousands of them ineligible for US assistance.” Since the law’s enactment in 1997, the department had failed to suspend or deem ineligible “a single Israeli unit despite overwhelming information of widespread GVHRs committed by Israel.”

In 2019, Congress amended the Leahy Law to require the secretary of state to provide foreign governments a list of ineligible units under the law and receive assurances that those governments would comply with the Leahy prohibition and block US assistance to such units before transferring assistance in cases of “untraceable assistance”. Despite this amendment, the IVLF failed to identify a single ineligible Israeli Unit responsible for gross human rights violations.

The failure to apply the law, the plaintiffs continue to argue, was “particularly shocking in the face of the unprecedented escalation of Israeli GVHRs since the Gaza War erupted on October 7, 2023.” The provisional orders of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) directing Israel to cease depriving Palestinians of essential items for their survival, and heeding the UN Genocide Convention, along with arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, underlined that point.

This legal action is taking place in the footsteps of previous efforts launched in US courts. In November 2023, a lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California by the Centre for Constitutional Rights, acting for a number of Palestinian human rights organisations, along with Palestinians in Gaza and the United States. It sought an order from the court “requiring that the President of the United States, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Defense adhere to their duty to prevent, and not further, the unfolding genocide of Palestinian people in Gaza.”

The relevant duty arose by virtue of the UN Genocide Convention being “judicially enforceable as a peremptory norm of customary international law.”  The complaint further argued that the genocidal conditions in Gaza had been “made possible because of unconditional support given [to Israel] by” President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Blinken and Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin.

The applicants failed to convince the judge that they had jurisdictional grounds to sue the officials in question, despite the judge declaring that there had been plausible grounds that Israel was contributing to genocidal conditions. This was subsequently affirmed on appeal by a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit, primarily on the political question doctrine. The principle holds that courts are not to review instances where allegations of international law violations have taken place if there are substantial questions of foreign policy involved. An expansive reading of this is arguably unwarranted, given that US obligations at international law would presumably fall within the bounds of curial assessment. The litigants remain undeterred and plan to challenge this further.

The litigation being steered by DAWN is likely to face similar arguments about jurisdiction: that assistance to foreign security units is a matter for the executive and therefore beyond a court’s assessment. But, trite as it is, courts are there to guard the appropriate application of statutes. The Leahy Law, as evidence of Congressional instruction to the State Department, is unequivocal in its purpose and scope regarding gross human rights violations. The time, it would seem, has come for those instructions to be applied to Israel without deferential favour.

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He will seek support for the latest draft of the ceasefire deal presented by President Joe Biden 10 days ago, which the US also hopes to put to a vote at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

However, with neither Israel nor Hamas having fully endorsed the plan, fighting continues, with air raids hitting across the Gaza Strip overnight on Sunday and Monday morning.

In Cairo, Blinken will meet Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi before visiting Israel for a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

As well as pressing the ceasefire proposal, the US official is set to discuss the reopening of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, a vital point for aid shipments into Gaza that Israel seized amid its ground invasion of the south of the enclave last month.

Categorical and permanent

Biden outlined on May 31 a three-phase proposal to achieve a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip that he said was presented by Israel. However, neither Israel nor Hamas has fully endorsed the plan, with negotiations ongoing.

A senior Hamas official, Sami Abu Zuhri, urged the US on Monday to press Israel to end the war.

“We call upon the US administration to put pressure on the occupation to stop the war on Gaza and the Hamas movement is ready to deal positively with any initiative that secures an end to the war,” he said.

The proposal includes the exchange of Palestinian prisoners with Israeli captives, withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, return of displaced Palestinians to their homes across the enclave, and a plan to reconstruct the territory, much of which has been destroyed since October 7.

More than 37,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war and about 84,000 injured, mostly women and children.

The trip comes as Washington has been working on multiple drafts of a resolution it aims to put to a vote at the UNSC to back up the proposal.

Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s Shihab Rattansi said that the latest version of the proposal differs in some significant ways from previous efforts.

“First of all, it explicitly states that Israel has accepted the ceasefire deal. A previous version only said that a ceasefire deal was acceptable to Israel,” he noted.

It also explicitly states that any ceasefire will continue after six weeks, and be renewed as long as negotiations continue.

“But it’s still not a categorical, permanent ceasefire. That’s what some members of the Security Council want,” Rattansi said.

Continued bombardment

Blinken’s trip comes two days after the Israeli military killed at least 274 Palestinians and wounded 698 more in Nuseirat in central Gaza as part of an operation that led to the release of four Israelis from Hamas captivity.

Hamas claimed that three more unnamed captives, including one holding US citizenship, were killed by Israeli forces during the raid, which was denied by Israel.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military continued its bombardment on sites across Gaza. Reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary said bodies continue to arrive at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, threatening to overwhelm the only operating hospital in the area.

Late on Sunday, Benny Gantz announced he was resigning as Israeli war cabinet minister. While the move is unlikely to threaten the Netanyahu administration immediately, it will make him even more reliant on far-right allies.

Blinken has previously met Gantz during visits to Israel, but it is unclear if a visit is scheduled on Monday.

The eighth regional tour since the start of the war by the US diplomat also comes as tensions are boiling in border fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, with both sides signaling they are ready for war after eight months of border fighting.

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They also discussed the escalating tensions witnessed in recent weeks regarding the Gaza Strip crisis and its potential regional ramifications, which pose a serious threat to the security and stability of the region, according to a statement released by the Egyptian Foreign Ministry.

The two ministers exchanged perspectives and assessments aimed at de-escalating the situation and averting the risk of further conflict escalation.

Minister Shoukry briefed his US counterpart on the outcomes of intensive communications with the Iranian and Israeli Foreign Ministers aimed at addressing the crisis and preventing it from spiraling out of control.

Shoukry underscored Egypt’s commitment to closely coordinating with the United States to manage the current crisis between Iran and Israel, as well as to halt the ongoing Israeli war in the Gaza Strip and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid to alleviate the humanitarian crisis facing the Palestinians in the Strip.

He emphasized that any expansion of the conflict would not serve the interests of any party and would only exacerbate tension and instability for the peoples of the region.

The two ministers agreed to maintain ongoing consultation and coordination between their respective countries to contain the current tensions and enhance opportunities for peace and crisis resolution in the Middle East.

Iran announced that it has launched “extensive retaliatory drone strikes” against Israel, while Middle Eastern countries including Iraq and Jordan closed their aerospace and suspended air aviation.

Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) announced on Saturday that it launched drones against Tel Aviv in response to the Israeli attack against the Iranian diplomatic mission in Syria’s Damascus on April 1.

On Sunday, Shoukry held two phone conversations on Sunday with his Iranian and Israeli counterparts, Hussein Amir-Abdollahian and Israel Katz, respectively, concerning the recent Iranian military strikes against Tel Aviv.

Shoukry expressed Egypt’s profound concern regarding the unprecedented military escalation between Iran and Israel, which poses a threat of spiraling out of control, destabilizing the region, and jeopardizing the interests of its peoples, stated the Egyptian Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Ahmed Abu Zeid, in a Sunday statement.

The Egyptian Minister urged his Iranian and Israeli counterparts to exercise the utmost restraint and refrain from brinkmanship policies and mutual provocations that could further escalate tension and instability in the Middle East.

Shoukry conveyed Egypt’s willingness to enhance its collaborative efforts with partners to de-escalate the current crisis, which is dangerously escalating, particularly amidst the ongoing Gaza Strip crisis, the enduring plight of the Palestinian people, and escalating tensions across various hotspots in the region, Abu Zeid continued.

The Egyptian Foreign Minister advocated for reason to prevail and for diplomatic efforts to be given a chance to find solutions that uphold Middle Eastern stability and ensure the safety of the region’s peoples.

During the conversation with the Israeli Foreign Minister, Shoukry emphasized Egypt’s steadfast stance calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, facilitating humanitarian aid delivery, and rejecting any actions aimed at displacing Palestinians from their lands, including conducting a ground military operation in the Palestinian city of Rafah.

On his X account, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said he had a conversation with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, during which he underscored Israel’s right to self-defense in the face of Iran’s unprecedented aggression.

“I stressed that Iran and its proxies are the central threat to stability in the Middle East,” he added.

Katz called upon nations in the region, along with the global community, to “stop Iran’s aggression.”

“The relationship with Egypt is important, and we will continue to work together to maintain stability and security in the region,” he said.

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