LONDON: A senior official in the administration of former US President Joe Biden told Sky News on Monday that he believes Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza.

Former State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said he does not believe genocide is taking place, but it is “without a doubt true that Israel has committed war crimes,” and Israeli forces are not being held “accountable” for their actions.

“There are two ways to think about the commission of war crimes,” he told the “Trump 100” podcast. “One is, if the state has pursued a policy of deliberately committing war crimes or is acting recklessly in a way that aids and abets war crimes. Is the state committing war crimes?

“That, I think, is an open question. I think what’s almost certainly not an open question is that there have been individual incidents that have been war crimes — where Israeli soldiers, members of the Israeli military, have committed war crimes.”

Miller said there had been internal clashes between senior White House staff about the US stance on the war almost from the beginning of the conflict.

“There were disagreements all along the way about how to handle policy. Some of those were big disagreements, some of those were little disagreements,” he added.

“The administration did debate, at times, whether and when to cut off weapons to Israel. You saw us in the spring of 2024 stop the shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel because we didn’t believe they’d use those in a way that was appropriate in Gaza.”

He hinted that in particular, there had been tension between Biden and Antony Blinken, his secretary of state, but said: “I’ll probably wait and let the secretary speak for himself … but I will say, speaking generally … it’s true about every senior official in government that they don’t win every policy fight that they enter into. And what you do is you make your best case to the president.”

Miller added that Biden’s staunch military support of Israel was also a source of contention, but that public dissent against it may have also encouraged Hamas.

“There were debates about whether to suspend other arms deliveries, and you saw at times us hold back certain arms while we negotiated the use of those arms … But we found ourselves in this really tough position, especially in that time period when it really came to a head … We were at a place where — I’m thinking of the way I can appropriately say this — the decisions and the thinking of (the) Hamas leadership weren’t always secret to the US and to our partners.”

He added: “It was clear to us in that period that there was a time when our public discussion of withholding weapons from Israel, as well as the protests on college campuses in the US, and the movement of some European countries to recognize the state of Palestine — appropriate discussions, appropriate decisions, protests are appropriate — but all of those things together were leading the leadership of Hamas to conclude that they didn’t need to agree to a ceasefire, they just needed to hold out for a little bit longer and they could get what they always wanted.

“Now, the thing that I look back on, that I’ll always ask questions of myself about, and I think this is true for others in government, is in that intervening period between the end of May and the middle of January (2025), when thousands of Palestinians were killed, innocent civilians who didn’t want this war, had nothing to do with it, was there more that we could’ve done to pressure the Israeli government to agree to that ceasefire? I think at times there probably was.”

Biden’s popularity waned as the 2024 presidential election approached, with the war in Gaza weighing heavily on his polling.

Miller called US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, “an extremely capable individual,” adding: “I know the people in the Biden administration who worked with him during the first negotiations for a Gaza ceasefire thought that he was capable.”

Miller continued: “I do think it’s extremely important that when people sit down with an envoy of the United States, they know that that envoy speaks for the president of the United States, and it’s very clear that Witkoff has that, and that’s an extremely valuable asset to bring to the table.”

ROME: A huge plume of ash, gas and rock spewed forth Monday from Italy’s Mount Etna, Europe’s largest active volcano, after a portion of its southeastern crater likely collapsed, authorities said.
Images showed a massive grey cloud billow forth from the volcano on the island of Sicily, beginning about 11:24 am local time (0924 GMT), according to the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV).
Surveillance cameras showed “a pyroclastic flow probably produced by a collapse of material from the northern flank of the Southeast Crater,” the agency said.
A pyroclastic flow occurs when volcanic rock, ash and hot gasses surge from volcanos. They are extremely dangerous.
The explosive activity “had transitioned to a lava fountain,” INGV said, with the plume of ash expected to dissipate toward the southwest.
A red alert issued for aviation authorities said the height of the volcanic cloud was estimated at 6.5 kilometers (more than four miles).
The nearby Catania airport was still in operation.