By Danny KEMP
WASHINGTON, July 26, 2024 (AFP) – Kamala Harris signaled a major shift on US Gaza policy Thursday, with the presidential hopeful telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to seal a peace deal and insisting she would not be “silent” on the suffering in the Palestinian enclave.
Ripping up outgoing President Joe Biden’s playbook of mostly behind-the-scenes pressure on Israel, the vice president said after meeting Netanyahu that it was time to end the “devastating” war.
“What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating. The images of dead children and desperate hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time,” Harris told reporters.
“We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering and I will not be silent.”
The 59-year-old — now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee after Biden said over the weekend he would not stand in November’s election — said she pressed Netanyahu on the dire situation in the “frank” meeting.
She said she “expressed with the prime minister my serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza, including the death of far too many innocent civilians.”
“And I made clear my serious concern about the dire humanitarian situation there.”
Biden, for his part, held Oval Office talks with Netanyahu and called on him to swiftly “finalize” a deal on a Gaza ceasefire and the release of hostages, and “reach a durable end to the war in Gaza,” according to a White House readout of the meeting.
– ‘Get this deal done’ –
Harris also called for the establishment of a Palestinian state and, similar to Biden, urged both Netanyahu and Hamas to agree to a ceasefire and hostage release deal to end the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
“As I just told Prime Minister Netanyahu, it is time to get this deal done,” she said.
Harris’s outspoken comments were a stark contrast to the largely amiable greetings between Biden and Netanyahu earlier in the day, even if it masked months of tensions between the two men as well as questions over the US president’s relevance.
“From a proud Zionist Jew to a proud Zionist Irish American, I want to thank you for 50 years of public service and 50 years of support for the State of Israel,” Netanyahu said in tribute to Biden at the start of the Oval Office meeting.
Harris has been more outspoken on Gaza in the past than Biden and there had been speculation that she could adopt a tougher approach on Israel. Officials earlier denied there is any “daylight” between her and the president.
The White House meetings come a day after the Israeli premier gave a fiery speech to the US Congress in which he vowed “total victory” against Hamas.
– ‘More optimistic’ –
Biden and Netanyahu later met the families of US hostages held in Gaza, who said they hoped for a possible new ceasefire proposal in coming days.
“We feel probably more optimistic than we have since the first round of releases in late November,” Jonathan Dekel-Chen, the father of American hostage Sagui Dekel-Chen, told reporters after the meeting.
Protesters chanted slogans outside a ring of metal barriers erected around the White House, following rowdy protests during Netanyahu’s speech to lawmakers.
While Biden has kept military aid flowing to Israel since Hamas’s October 7 attacks, relations with Netanyahu have been deeply strained by Israel’s conduct during the war and suspicions that he may be stalling on a deal.
The Hamas attack on October 7 resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people in Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Out of 251 people taken hostage that day, 111 are still being held inside the Gaza Strip, including 39 who the military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 39,175 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths.