The United States said on Monday that Israel had given assurances about the use of American weapons, saying there was no evidence of violations of international humanitarian law in the war in Gaza, despite sharp criticism from members of Congress, AFP reported.

Last month, the U.S. government asked countries that receive U.S. military aid to provide “reliable and credible” human rights guarantees.

The State Department said Israel, along with six other countries that receive US military aid (Colombia, Iraq, Kenya, Nigeria, Somalia and Ukraine), provided those assurances in writing by the Sunday deadline.

“In each case, these assurances have been provided by a senior official of the partner government who is credible and has the ability and authority to make decisions and commit to the matters underlying these assurances,” said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller. mass media

He added that Joe Biden’s administration would submit a report to Congress by May 8, without specifying whether the US president had waived those guarantees.

“We found no violation of international humanitarian law either during the conduct of the war or during the provision of humanitarian aid,” replied Matthew Miller.

As Israel’s main sponsor, the United States has recently expressed its reluctance to continue Israel’s offensive in Gaza, which has killed more than 32,000 people, mostly civilians, according to authorities in the Hamas-controlled Palestinian territory.

The offensive follows an unprecedented attack by Hamas on October 7 in southern Israel that killed at least 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to AFP estimates based on official Israeli figures.

About 17 US senators asked the Biden administration not to qualify Israeli guarantees as “reliable”, arguing that US aid “should be used to advance our interests and values”.

The UN’s fears of an imminent famine in Gaza “show very clearly” that the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is not doing enough to allow aid to reach the starving and desperate people of Gaza,” they wrote in a letter written by the Democratic senator. Chris Van Hollen and signed by Tim Kane, Dick Durbin and Bernie Sanders.

In their view, it would be “unwarranted” “to consider the assurances provided by the Netanyahu government as meeting the criteria of ‘reliability and reliability’ at this time.”