By Servet Gunerigok
WASHINGTON (AA) - Tariq Habash, a political appointee at the Education Department, resigned Wednesday, citing the Biden administration's approach to the Gaza conflict and its failure to halt what he termed as Israel's "collective punishment tactics."
"I cannot stay silent as this administration turns a blind eye to the atrocities committed against innocent Palestinian lives, in what leading human rights experts have called a genocidal campaign by the Israeli government," Habash wrote in his resignation letter.
Habash, who served for three years as a special assistant in the department’s Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development, was the sole Palestinian-American appointee at the agency.
He said the actions of the Biden administration have put millions of innocent lives in danger in Gaza.
"I cannot be quietly complicit as this administration fails to leverage its influence as Israel’s strongest ally to halt the abusive and ongoing collective punishment tactics that have cut off Palestinians in Gaza from food, water, electricity, fuel, and medical supplies, leading to widespread disease and starvation," said Habash.
- Dehumanization, erasure of identity
Habash accused the administration of aiding indiscriminate violence against Palestinians in Gaza, questioning the integrity of Palestinian death counts in Israeli attacks and voting against resolutions that called for a cease-fire at the UN
"And administration leaders have even repeated unverified claims that systematically dehumanize Palestinians," he wrote.
In addition, he revealed experiencing dehumanization and identity erasure by peers, the media and the US government.
Habash, whose family lived through the Nakba, or Catastrophe in 1948, when Palestinians were forced from their lands to make way for an Israeli state, said hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were violently and forcibly expelled from their homes and his relatives have never been allowed to return to their familial homes for 75 years.
"Millions of Palestinians have faced decades of occupation, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid, and the Biden Administration’s passive acceptance of this status quo is wholly out of line with democratic values. Our government continues to provide unconditional military funding to a government that is uninterested in protecting innocent lives," added Habash.
In October, Josh Paul, a now former State Department official, resigned because of US arms sent to Israel amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
"I am leaving today because I believe that in our current course with regards to the continued — indeed, expanded and expedited — provision of lethal arms to Israel — I have reached the end of that bargain," he wrote in a letter.
Israel has launched relentless air and ground attacks on the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by Hamas on Oct. 7.
At least 22,185 Palestinians have since been killed and 57,035 injured, according to Gaza’s health authorities, while nearly 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the Hamas attack.
The Israeli onslaught has left Gaza in ruins, with 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure damaged or destroyed, and nearly 2 million residents displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine.