Vice President Kamala Harris told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday that it was time to reach a ceasefire agreement in what she called a “frank and constructive” meeting.
Harris made unusual comments after a meeting with a world leader as she steps up her role in the White House and on the campaign trail this week as the Democrats’ likely presidential nominee.
President Joe Biden also met with Netanyahu on Thursday, allowing the press in at the start of the meeting but making no public comments afterward, instead allowing his vice president to have the final say.
“I just told Prime Minister Netanyahu that it is time to reach this agreement,” he said. “So to all those who have been calling for a ceasefire and to all those who yearn for peace, I see you and I hear you: let’s reach this agreement.”
The vice president began her statement by talking about how she had supported Israel since her youth and then moved on to the “dire humanitarian situation” in Gaza.
Vice President Kamala Harris (right) met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) on Thursday afternoon and told reporters the meeting was “frank and constructive.”
Harris made rare comments after a meeting with a world leader as she steps up her role in the White House and on the campaign trail this week as the Democratic presidential nominee.
“From my time as a child raising funds to plant trees for Israel, to my time in the United States Senate and now in the White House, I have had an unwavering commitment to the existence of the State of Israel, to its security, and to the people of Israel,” Harris said.
“I have said it many times, but it bears repeating: Israel has the right to defend itself,” he continued. “And the way it does so is important.”
He said he expressed to Netanyahu “my serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza, including the deaths of too many innocent civilians.”
“And I have made clear my deep concern about the dire humanitarian situation there, with more than two million people facing high levels of food insecurity and half a million people facing catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity,” Harris continued.
“What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating,” the vice president said.
As a likely Democratic nominee, Harris must reckon with the thorny politics of the Gaza war with members of her party, as the progressive left has expressed outrage over the IDF forces’ treatment of Palestinian civilians.
Palestinian health authorities have estimated that around 39,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed since the war began following Hamas’ brutal terror attack on Israel on October 7.
Hamas militants killed some 1,197 Israelis, mostly civilians, in that assault.
During Netanyahu’s address to Congress on Wednesday, Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib held up a sign that read “war criminal” on one side and “guilty of genocide” on the other.
The White House has rejected terms like “war criminal” and “genocide.”
“The images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time. We cannot look away from these tragedies,” Harris told reporters on Thursday.
“We cannot afford to become numb to suffering and I will not remain silent,” she said.
He then outlined what is on the table for a ceasefire and for the Israelis to get their hostages back.
Before concluding his brief remarks, he asked Americans to view the war in shades of gray.
“It’s important for the American people to remember that the war in Gaza is not a binary issue,” he said. “However, too often the conversation is binary when the reality is quite the opposite.”
“That’s why I asked my fellow Americans to help foster efforts to recognize the complexity, nuances, and history of the region,” he continued. “Let us all condemn terrorism and violence. Let us all do what we can to prevent the suffering of innocent civilians, and let us condemn anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and hatred of any kind.”
It’s too early to tell whether Harris’ tough tone, but her search for nuance, will be enough to win back younger voters whom Biden was losing because of his support for Israel.
The “non-committal” move lost Biden about 101,000 potential votes in the key state of Michigan, as Democrats in the primaries used that decision to express their displeasure with the president’s foreign policy stance on Gaza.
Before her new role as a Democratic presidential candidate, Harris had already been more nuanced than Biden when discussing the war.
In March, he called for a ceasefire agreement to end the “immense suffering” of Palestinians and criticised Israel for failing to provide enough aid to Gaza.
This week, she kept an event with the historically black sorority Zeta Phi Beta in Indiana on her schedule instead of being in Washington for Netanyahu’s address to Congress.
However, he quickly returned from Houston (where he had addressed the American Federation of Teachers on Thursday morning) for his afternoon meeting with the Israeli prime minister.
