That position is contained in a State Department report released Thursday after its publication was delayed for several days and which sought to determine whether Israel had violated international humanitarian law, which could have led the United States to cut off military aid to Israel. The report stops short of concluding that Israel violated international law and its obligations to Washington, though it uses strong language in stating that “it is reasonable to assess” that U.S.-origin weapons were used by the Israeli military “in some instances” in a manner inconsistent with its obligations under international law. While the findings represent the strongest such statements to date by officials in the Democratic-led Biden administration, the fact that the U.S. could not definitively link specific American-made weapons to individual Israeli strikes in Gaza gives the administration some wiggle room in any future decisions. The unprecedented assessment, which was requested by Democrats in the U.S. Congress, comes after seven months of airstrikes, ground fighting and aid blockades that have killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip. While U.S. officials said they could not gather all the information they needed on specific strikes, given “Israel’s significant reliance on U.S.-origin defense articles, it is reasonable to assess that defense articles … have been used … since May 7 in a manner inconsistent with their obligations under LOAC [the Law of Armed Conflict] or established best practices to mitigate civilian harm,” the report states. It adds that while the Israeli military has the training, technology and expertise to minimize civilian casualties, “the results on the ground, including the high number of civilian casualties, raise serious questions about whether the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is effectively employing them in all cases.” Biden is in the final months of a tough reelection campaign against Republican Donald Trump and faces demands from many Democrats to cut off weapons shipments to Israel and denunciations from political rivals who accuse him of wavering in his support for Israel in its time of need. The Democratic administration took one of its first steps toward conditioning military aid to Israel in recent days when it halted a shipment of 3,500 bombs amid concerns about an impending Israeli offensive in Rafah, a densely populated southern city of more than a million Palestinians. Israel says it abides by all U.S. and international laws and that it investigates credible allegations of wrongdoing by its security forces and that its campaign in Gaza was proportionate to the existential threat it says it faces from Hamas. Read Also: Military operation in Rafah is a concern but does not cross red lines (Portuguese version)