As Vice President Kamala Harris hits the campaign trail with two months until Election Day, she has only rarely discussed the Middle East — such as a brief speech following a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in July, and in a section of her speech at the Democratic National Convention in August.
Now, Harris again finds herself with little choice other than to address the nearly year-long Israel-Hamas war, after the IDF announced over the weekend that Hamas had murdered six Israeli hostages, including American-Israeli 23-year-old Hersh Goldberg-Polin. In the aftermath of the discovery of the hostages’ bodies by Israeli forces in Gaza on Saturday, Harris quickly stepped into an elevated foreign policy role in responding to the crisis with President Joe Biden.
Both Harris and Biden each released forceful statements condemning Hamas’ brutal actions and pledging to work harder than ever to free the remaining hostages, including several Americans. But Harris’ statement went one step further than Biden’s. She stated plainly: “Hamas cannot control Gaza.” Biden did not say the same.
“Hamas is an evil terrorist organization. With these murders, Hamas has even more American blood on its hands,” Harris said in the statement. “The threat Hamas poses to the people of Israel — and American citizens in Israel — must be eliminated and Hamas cannot control Gaza. The Palestinian people too have suffered under Hamas’ rule for nearly two decades.”
Harris’ language mirrors the rhetoric employed by the Biden administration earlier in the war. But in recent months, both she and Biden have shifted away from calling for an end to Hamas’ rule in Gaza. In May, when Biden announced the latest push for a deal that would bring about a cease-fire and hostage release, the president stopped short of calling for the terror group to be removed from power.
Since becoming the Democratic nominee in July, Harris has reiterated that she stands by Biden’s positioning in the war. Beyond reiterating her support for Israel’s defense and for a hostage-and-cease-fire deal, she has shared few details about her thinking.
So far, the White House is choosing to let her statement about Hamas rule stand on its own. A spokesperson for Harris declined to comment when asked if it represented a new direction in cease-fire talks. On Monday, in a tweet urging a deal, Harris did not reiterate her call for Hamas’ ouster. But she did quote a line from Biden’s statement: “Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes.”
Harris has repeated the language about removing Hamas from power in the past, but not since early March. Since then, the Biden administration’s posture toward Israel has occasionally turned confrontational, such as when Biden threatened in May to withhold certain arms shipments if Israel mounted a major ground invasion in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, or when Washington condemned Israel’s accidental killing of aid workers in Gaza in April.
Harris took a particularly strong stance against an invasion of Rafah in the spring: “It would be a mistake to move into Rafah with any type of military operation,” she said in March, adding she would not rule out consequences if an Israeli invasion proceeded. After the hostages’ bodies were discovered in a tunnel in Rafah this weekend, Harris faced scrutiny for her earlier opposition to Israeli military action there.
In her statement on Saturday, Harris described a meeting with Goldberg-Polin’s parents, Rachel Goldberg-Polin and Jon Polin, earlier this year. “When I met with Jon and Rachel earlier this year, I told them: You are not alone. That remains true as they mourn this terrible loss,” she said. Harris called the couple on Sunday “to express our condolences following the brutal murder of their son by Hamas terrorists,” she said in a tweet.
On Monday, before departing for a campaign event in Pittsburgh, Harris and Biden met in the Situation Room with the U.S. hostage deal negotiating team. In the meeting, Harris and Biden “received an update from the U.S. negotiation team on the status of the bridging proposal outlined by the United States, Qatar and Egypt,” according to a White House readout of the meeting.
In the aftermath of the hostages’ deaths, former President Donald Trump sought to make their killing a campaign issue. “The Hostage Crisis in Israel is only taking place because Comrade Kamala Harris is weak and ineffective, and has no idea what she’s doing,” he wrote in a post on his social media network Truth Social. “THE OCTOBER 7th ISRAELI CRISIS WOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED IF I WERE PRESIDENT!”
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Publish date : 2024-09-02 19:16:00
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