Above photo: US Office of Palestinian Affairs.
Several senior staffers in the US government have quit their posts in recent months.
Citing Biden’s unfettered support for Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
The deputy assistant secretary for Israeli-Palestinian affairs at the US State Department, Andrew Miller, resigned from his position this week in what US media describes as a significant “setback” to the White House’s efforts to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza.
Miller’s colleagues told the Washington Post that he announced his departure on 21 June in a surprise move, citing his family and saying “he has seen them sparingly as the eight-month war in Gaza has become all-consuming.”
Nevertheless, officials familiar with Miller described him as skeptical of President Joe Biden’s “bear hug” strategy toward Israel.
“Miller is said to have believed that the leverage the United States has over Israel as its biggest military, economic, and political backer could have been used more effectively,” the Washington Post reports.
“He was caught in a bureau of well-intentioned and capable Foreign Service officers who have had little or no impact on US policy before and even after 7 October,” Aaron David Miller, an expert on West Asia who has advised previous US governments, said of Andrew Miller.
In response to this comment, State Department spokesman Mathew Miller “rejected that characterization of the bureau” and noted that State Secretary Anthony Blinken “has brought its leader, Barbara Leaf, on all eight of his trips to [West Asia] since 7 October.”
“There’s no question that Andrew’s resignation should be a wake-up call for [Tel Aviv]. If [the Israeli government is] creating an environment where people like him are resigning, they’re clearly doing something very wrong,” a senior State Department official told the Times of Israel on Saturday.
Andrew Miller is the latest in a string of resignations from the Biden government across several agencies over its continued support for Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
Last month, former State Department official Stacy Gilbert resigned in protest of a report that cleared Tel Aviv of responsibility for its war crimes in Gaza. Her resignation came two weeks after the first Jewish American official in the US government publicly quit in protest of President Joe Biden’s support of the genocide in Gaza.
“The President has the power to call for a lasting cease-fire, to stop sending weapons to Israel, and to condition aid. The US has used nearly no leverage throughout the last eight months to hold Israel accountable,” Lily Greenberg Call said in her resignation letter. She also chastised Biden for “making Jews the face of the American war machine.”
In February, US airman Aaron Bushnell self-immolated in protest to the official US position outside of Israel’s embassy in Washington. “I will no longer be complicit in genocide,” Bushnell said in a live stream before the act.