Ex-Biden aide claims Israel has more tolerance for causing civilian casualties than US

The US State Department’s recently departed point man for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed that Israel has a higher tolerance for civilian casualties than the United States.

“It’s not that Israel doesn’t take steps to avert civilian casualties. They do, but based on my experience, they would choose to launch military action in contexts where the a priori risk of civilian casualties was much higher than what the US military would feel comfortable doing,” said Andrew Miller in a recent interview on the Lawfare Daily podcast.

“Once they do engage, they’re not trying to deliberately harm civilians, but have a higher risk tolerance for civilian casualties than we do,” added Miller, who stepped down from his post as deputy assistant secretary for Israeli-Palestinian affairs in June to spend more time with his family.

According to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, nearly 42,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its military response to Hamas’s October 7 onslaught in which some 1,200 were killed in Israel and 251 were taken hostage. Hamas death figures, which can’t be verified, don’t differentiate between civilians and combatants. Israel says it has killed over 17,000 combatants as of August, in addition to 1,000 terrorists killed inside Israel on October 7, and that the ratio of civilians to combatants killed is roughly one to one.

In talks with US counterparts, Israeli officials have pointed to US-led operations against ISIS and during World War II, which had higher ratios of civilians to combatants killed. American officials have responded by calling for Israel to adopt a more tailored approach to fighting Hamas. The heightened sensitivity over civilian casualties in Washington is also due to Israel’s reliance on US arms.

Discomfort with Israel’s allegedly higher risk tolerance for civilian casualties is what led the US to ultimately make its decision to withhold a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel in May, Miller said in the podcast interview. Miller joined the left-leaning Center for American Progress think tank as a senior fellow in August.

“There were at least some instances where it appears Israel used the 2000-pound bombs, which are designed to take out city blocks to eliminate one or two militants, which is certainly disproportionate, and I’ve described as treating a toothache by by immediately removing the tooth,” he said.

Explaining the Israeli tendency to overlook this US concern, the former senior Biden official pointed to the trauma Israel experienced as a result of Hamas’s October 7 attack, which exposed “a deep sense of vulnerability and insecurity — similar to what we experienced [after 9/11].”

Accordingly, “there’s been a greater willingness on Israel’s part to use force in ways that they might not have previously because they feel a need to restore their reputation, to restore their perception of military dominance in the region,” Miller maintained. “Unfortunately, in some cases, that results in actions that could be inconsistent with international law or at least inconsistent with best practices for how you would conduct operations.”

“We tried every means of telling the Israelis that the tactics, the approach needed to change, and when private persuasion was not successful, we had to consider some other type of move,” he said, arguing in favor of the decision to withhold the shipment of heavy bombs.

Removing the arm from the shoulder

This decision did not come naturally for US President Joe Biden, whose initial approach to the war drew from the same playbook he used during the 11-day conflict between Israel and Hamas in May 2021.

Then, Miller said, “the administration largely refrained from excessive public commentary and tried to focus on private engagement with the Israeli government on the war.”

“They came away from that episode with the conclusion that private engagement, working with the Israelis directly out of the spotlight, gave us the best chance to influence and shape their behavior and ultimately to bring a war to an end,” he explained, describing what became known as the “arm around Israel approach.”

“That was the operating assumption coming into this conflict, and it’s taken a long, long time for the administration to recognize that in this conflict, and the one that began on October 7, 2023, the same tactics have not been as effective,” he argued.

Explaining what he said were the differences between the current and previous Gaza wars, Miller pointed to the horrific nature of Hamas’s October 7 attack — which marked the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust — and the makeup of Netanyahu’s coalition, which now includes far-right parties that shrink the premier’s political “space to maneuver.”

“Just for that reason alone, I think it would have been fair to conclude that private diplomacy may not be enough, that it would require some degree of public diplomacy and public pressure,” the former deputy assistant secretary argued, adding that public pressure on Hamas is equally warranted.

He noted that the Biden administration has made a point of increasingly criticizing far-right ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich “who are serving as an obstacle to a political off-ramp to eventually a permanent ceasefire.”

“But ultimately, the decision does rest with Netanyahu. This coalition is one of his own making. He doesn’t have to keep this coalition. He’s choosing to keep his coalition because he fears that either he will lose power, or even if he keeps power, he’s not going to have a coalition that will be as open to protecting him from judicial prosecution as he believes that Smotrich and Ben Gvir are,” Miller argued, referring to the ongoing criminal cases against the prime minister.

Winning the day after

One of the main discussions Ben Gvir and Smotrich have thwarted throughout the war was about the post-war management of Gaza, Miller maintained.

The Israeli security establishment has engaged substantively in planning regarding the so-called “day after,” he said. But without buy-in from political leaders, those conversations went nowhere.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu was hesitant to authorize discussions on the day after, precisely because he knew that having that debate would reveal the fissures within his coalition, between the Ben Gvirs and the Smotrichs who want to reoccupy Gaza and other ministers who are still center-right, but are a bit more pragmatic, who have no interest in Israel remaining in Gaza, and could even contemplate a role for the Palestinian Authority,” Miller reflected.

He acknowledged that discussions on the matter with the PA and other partners in the Middle East and Europe weren’t much more productive.

“There has been a reluctance on the part of Arab countries to engage in substantive planning because they were concerned that it would appear they are in some way complicit in Israel’s operation. The PA had the same concern, and they also are conflicted in terms of the posture toward Gaza, where President Abbas still has… hurt feelings over the 2007 coup by Hamas in which he was ousted, and that has led to questions about what the PA is willing and capable of doing within Gaza,” Miller said.

The former senior Biden aide expressed concern over the lack of planning on all sides for the day after, even as it remains unclear when the war will end.

“As we learned from our checkered history in post-conflict environments, if you don’t have a credible plan and a scheme to implement that plan ready to go on day one, you may lose a step on the margin, find yourself far behind,” Miller said.

In order to better address the issue, he recommended that the next administration appoint a special envoy to deal with the Israel-Palestinian conflict — a step US President Joe Biden refrained from taking as he prioritized other issues upon entering office.

“My view throughout the past [year] has been that there’s no way that the United States and Israel could win the conflict in terms of international public opinion,” Miller lamented. “We could mitigate the damage, we can contain it, but ultimately we both were going to be criticized to varying degrees over what was done.”

“What can be won is the post-conflict period,” he said, urging the US government not to revert to a more hands-off approach — an implicit criticism of his former boss. Biden officials have sometimes pushed back on this characterization of their approach, while arguing that it chose to focus on securing incremental movements toward a two-state solution, as opposed to pushing for final-status negotiations when the parties weren’t ready.

Miller expressed his hope that the US make “another serious attempt at making progress toward an end-of-conflict settlement.”

“That’s not said with naïveté. The probability of succeeding is low, and that’s part of the reason why the administration didn’t prioritize this issue… But what we’ve learned over the last [year] is that even if the probability of success is low, there are some circumstances that are so costly, that are just intrinsically so detrimental to US interests.”

“Managing and trying to contain losses is going to be so damaging to US interests, it’s going to be so damaging to Israelis and Palestinians and other peoples in the region affected by the conflict,” he added.