Israel has taken action on four of those five units, State Department Deputy Spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters, and the fifth unit is in talks with the Israeli government.
“After a thorough process, we found that five Israeli units are responsible for separate gross violations of human rights,” said V. Patel.
He added that all this took place before the October 7 Hamas attack and outside of the Gaza Strip.
Patel declined to name the units or say what measures the Israeli government had taken against them.
Media reports point to the Netzah Yehuda battalion, made up of mostly ultra-Orthodox Jews, being blamed for the violations.
US law prohibits the government from funding or arming foreign security forces with credible allegations of human rights abuses.
The US provides military aid to its allies around the world, including Israel.
Israel’s military has been fighting the Islamist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip for nearly seven months and is shelling the Hezbollah movement on the border with Lebanon almost daily. Both groups are supported by Iran.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reacted angrily to recent reports that the US may sanction a unit of the Israeli military for human rights abuses, saying the military should not be punished when the country is at war.
The October 7 attack by Hamas killed 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to Israel.
In the attack, Hamas militants took about 250 hostages, 129 of whom Israel says are still in the Gaza Strip, including 34 dead.
After promising to destroy Hamas, Israel launched a massive military offensive. At least 34,488 people have been killed in the war in the Gaza Strip, according to the Health Ministry of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
