When Mike Casey arrived in Jerusalem in 2020, he wasn’t on the lookout for a battle.
A military veteran with a stint in Iraq who joined the state division for over a decade of postings throughout Asia, he got here with the measured optimism of a profession diplomat – two years of Arabic coaching forward, a possible change in administration, and an opportunity to make a distinction. He’d ultimately work his approach up the ranks to turn into the state division’s deputy political counselor on Gaza.
What he didn’t anticipate was changing into a key witness to what he describes as a scientific failure of US overseas coverage.
“The extra knowledgeable you turn into on this challenge, you possibly can’t keep away from realizing how dangerous it’s,” Casey informed the Guardian.
Casey resigned from the state division in July after 4 years on the job, discreetly leaving the put up in contrast to different latest high-profile authorities departures. Now seated at his kitchen desk within the quiet suburbs of northern Michigan, Casey mirrored on how, as one in all solely two folks in the whole US authorities explicitly centered on Gaza, he turned an unwilling chronicler of a humanitarian disaster.
“I acquired so uninterested in writing about useless youngsters,” he stated. “Simply continuously having to show to Washington that these youngsters really died after which watching nothing occur.”
Casey’s work operate included documenting the humanitarian and political panorama via categorized cables, analysis and reporting. However his disillusionment wasn’t sudden. It was a sluggish accumulation of bureaucratic betrayals – every report dismissed, every humanitarian concern bulldozed by political expediency.
“We’d write every day updates on Gaza,” he stated. Colleagues used to joke, he stated, that they might connect money to the studies and nonetheless no one would learn them.
In line with the most recent UN figures, greater than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, with 90% of the inhabitants displaced and going through catastrophic humanitarian circumstances that teeter on the point of famine. Regardless of worldwide authorized interventions – together with the worldwide courtroom of justice’s order to halt army operations in Rafah earlier this 12 months and the worldwide felony courtroom’s pursuit of battle crimes prices towards Israeli leaders – the battle continues unabated, with humanitarian help barely stopping whole collapse.
Months after the aerial bombardment and subsequent floor invasion of Gaza started after Hamas’s 7 October assault on Israel, the post-war planning conferences turned a selected supply of frustration.
Casey stated he and his colleagues developed complete methods for Gaza’s reconstruction, solely to have them systematically rejected. “We outlined three key angles,” he defined. “Humanitarian help, safety infrastructure and governance. We outlined connecting Gaza with the West Financial institution, pushing for Palestinian Authority to say its management in Gaza on the gubernatorial and ministerial ranges, and the wants for elections sooner or later.”
However every proposal, whether or not via studies or conferences in Washington, met the identical response: “Each thought we got here up with, [the Biden administration] would simply say, ‘Properly, the Israelis have one other thought.’”
These Israeli proposals – which included having native clans run Gaza – struck him as not simply impractical, however intentionally damaging.
“We wrote quite a few studies and cables explaining why this wouldn’t work,” he stated. “It’s not in our curiosity to have warlords operating Gaza.”
An inner job description obtained by the Guardian confirmed Casey’s function, noting that he was the “lead political reporting officer on inner politics and safety points within the Gaza Strip and on Palestinian reconciliation points”.
“The officer leads the Mission’s interagency efforts on Gaza, and is the back-up for Gaza financial points,” it goes on.
The workplace of Palestinian affairs had been formally established in 2022, and was meant to be a cornerstone of US engagement, communication, coverage and evaluation when it got here to the Palestinian Authority and the territories, housing a pair dozen People and round 75 native staffers.
Its roots lie within the US Consulate Common in Jerusalem, which merged with the US embassy when then president Donald Trump declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel in 2019.
Nevertheless its affect has been overshadowed by the broader state division response throughout this battle, which took the lead on high-level diplomatic efforts like de-escalation and negotiations, safety coordination with Israel and engagement with different regional and worldwide allies. The nationwide safety council additionally performs a central function in creating and implementing US coverage whereas advising the president, together with the Pentagon, offering army help to Israel.
In response to Casey’s claims, a state division spokesperson informed the Guardian: “We’ve repeatedly stated that Israel should not solely adjust to worldwide humanitarian regulation however should additionally take each possible step to forestall civilian hurt – this can be a ethical and strategic crucial.”
When Trump left workplace, Casey had initially hoped the Biden administration would signify a extra balanced method, however it as a substitute disenchanted him at each flip.
One significantly galling second got here close to the onset of the battle, when Joe Biden publicly questioned casualty numbers – which had been estimated at round 8,300 killed in beneath a month – numbers that Casey himself had documented.
“I used to be the one writing the studies,” he stated. “What’s the purpose of me writing these items, when you’re simply going to ignore it?”
The White Home’s nationwide safety council didn’t reply to a request for remark.
In contrast to his earlier diplomatic postings in Malaysia, China and Pakistan, Casey discovered direct negotiations with Israeli officers essentially completely different when it got here to how the US makes use of its leverage.
“In Malaysia, when you didn’t cooperate, you may get sanctioned,” he explains. “With Pakistan, we may pull coaching applications, cease sure help.”
“However with the Israelis, it’s fully completely different. They simply have to pull out negotiations and we’ll ultimately comply with no matter they need.”
When requested for remark, Israel’s spokesperson for the ministry of overseas affairs Oren Marmorstein stated: “We see no want to answer baseless accusations stemming solely from the frustration of a former worker.”
By the point Casey left in July, Palestinians had obtained round $674m in whole US help, in contrast with the White Home’s record-breaking inexperienced gentle of $17.9bn in army help to Israel over the course of the 12 months by October. At one level, Biden signed into regulation a one-year ban on funding Unrwa, which helps Palestinian refugees within the area as a part of this 12 months’s $1.2tn federal appropriations bundle, although funding for Unrwa USA – which is a separate entity – has resumed.
Casey isn’t the one profession staffer throughout a number of ranges of US overseas coverage to really feel frustration and disillusionment. There have been high-profile resignations from the state division over the past 12 months, together with the political-military affairs director Josh Paul, the deputy assistant secretary for Israeli-Palestinian affairs, Andrew Miller, the overseas affairs officer Annelle Sheline and the diplomat Hala Rharrit.
However what stands out about Casey’s stroll is the extent of his proximity and direct coverage evaluation with the battle and the quiet exit that didn’t embrace a public resignation.
“I used to be too embarrassed to proceed being an American diplomat,” he stated. “I knew I couldn’t go to a different task and performance.”
To some analysts of Center East affairs, the administration’s method that resulted in officers quitting reached a stage of dysfunction that was distinctive in its stagnancy.
“We’ve been assembly to speak a few ceasefire for a lot of, many months,” stated Khaled Elgindy, the director of the Center East Institute’s program on Palestine and Israel-Palestinian affairs who usually meets with and advises administration officers. “The factor that I used to be struck by is how little they’d really moved. Each time that we noticed them, it was exceptional. There was no shifting of the needle, nearly in any respect.”
To others, the administration’s personal metrics turned an indictment of its method.
Yousef Munayyer, head of Palestine/Israel Program on the Arab Heart Washington DC, famous that the dealing with of humanitarian help had reached “a low that I don’t suppose we’ve ever seen earlier than”.
He described a calculated technique the place the administration was “intentionally utilizing this instrument of humanitarian help as a approach to purchase time and diffuse some rigidity amongst their very own base to indicate that they’re making an attempt to do one thing”.
In October, the USA issued Israel a 30-day ultimatum demanding in a leaked letter not less than 350 truckloads of humanitarian help into Gaza. Regardless of the specific requests and help ranges plummeting far beneath the benchmarks, the Biden administration defined it might not restrict arms offers when the time expired as a result of it had seen restricted progress.
The newest information from Mercy Corps and different reduction businesses discovered that Gaza’s humanitarian disaster remains to be spiraling beneath the degrees for primary human wants, with simply 65 help vans now getting into Gaza every day – a discount from the pre-war common of 500 vans.
Removed from diplomacy, Casey now works at a neighborhood financial institution, the place he watches from afar and his criticisms prolong past a single administration. He sees a systemic failure in US coverage in the direction of Palestinians – an entire absence of a coherent technique that in flip hurts Israelis too and stays viscerally private.
“I bear in mind two youngsters killed in a ramming assault at a bus cease in Jerusalem who had been the identical age as my youngsters,” Casey stated. “You see the impact the battle has on folks in Israel as properly. Israelis deserve higher, not simply Palestinians.”
His final evaluation?
“We don’t have a coverage on Palestine. We simply do what the Israelis need us to do.”
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