Palestinians sue Biden admin over Israeli arms sales

Five Palestinian Arabs sue the United States State Department, accusing it of ignoring alleged Israeli violations of American human rights laws, enabling continued arming of the Israeli military.

By World Israel News Staff

A group of Palestinian Arabs have filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration’s State Department over American arms sales to the Israeli military.

The suit was filed on Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for Washington D.C. by five Palestinian Arabs residing in the Gaza Strip, Judea and Samaria, and the United States. The U.S.-based group DAWN – Democracy for the Arab World Now – helped organize the lawsuit.

The lead plaintiff in the suit is a Gazan woman and former UNRWA employee who claims to have been displaced seven times since the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, and that she lost 20 family members in the conflict.

Three others are Palestinian Arabs with U.S. citizenship; the fifth is Shawan Jabarin, director of the Palestinian NGO Al-Haq and an activist with ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror organization.

In the court filing Tuesday, attorneys for the plaintiffs accused the State Department of knowingly circumventing the so-called “Leahy Law” – a pair of amendments passed in 1997 and 1998 that bar the U.S. from arming foreign units credibly accused of gross human rights violations.

The law was amended again in 2019, mandating that the State Department vet foreign units slated to receive American weaponry for possible human rights violations.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys argue that by allegedly ignoring the Leahy Law, the State Department can be sued under the Administrative Procedure Act.

“The State Department’s calculated failure to apply the Leahy Law is particularly shocking in the face of the unprecedented escalation of Israeli gross violations of human rights since the Gaza War erupted on October 7, 2023,” the court filing reads in part.

“The International Court of Justice has issued provisional orders to Israel to stop depriving Palestinians in Gaza of items essential to their survival, finding that its actions are plausibly genocidal.” The International Criminal
Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for [gross violations of human rights].”