Harris pushes Netanyahu to ease suffering in Gaza: 'I will not be silent'

By Steve Holland and Jeff Mason

July 25, 2024

WASHINGTON, July 25 (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris pressured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday to help reach a Gaza ceasefire deal that would ease the suffering of Palestinian civilians, striking a tougher tone than President Joe Biden.

"It is time for this war to end," Harris said in a televised statement after she held face-to-face talks with Netanyahu.

Harris, the likely Democratic presidential nominee after Biden dropped out of the election race on Sunday, did not mince words about the humanitarian crisis gripping Gaza after nine months of war between Israel and Hamas militants.

"We cannot allow ourselves to be numb to the suffering and I will not be silent," she said.
Harris' remarks were sharp and serious in tone and raised the question of whether she would be more aggressive in dealing with Netanyahu if elected president on Nov. 5. But analysts do not expect there would be a major shift in U.S. policy toward Israel, Washington's closest ally in the Middle East.
The conflict began on Oct. 7 when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel from Gaza, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 captives, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel's retaliatory attack in Gaza has killed more than 39,000 people and caused a humanitarian calamity with most of the coastal enclave leveled, people displaced from their homes, famine and a shortage of emergency relief.
Biden met with Netanyahu but did not make substantive remarks. Aides said he pressed for a ceasefire in his first face-to-face talks with the Israeli leader since Biden traveled to Tel Aviv in the days after Oct. 7.

Netanyahu will meet Harris' Republican rival, Donald Trump, on Friday at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
A ceasefire has been the subject of negotiations for months. U.S. officials believe the parties are closer than ever before to an agreement for a six-week ceasefire in exchange for the release by Hamas of women, sick, elderly and wounded hostages.

 U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House grounds, in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 25, 2024. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

"There has been hopeful movement in the talks to secure an agreement on this deal, and as I just told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it is time to get this deal done," Harris said.

Although as vice president she has mostly echoed Biden in firmly backing Israel's right to defend itself, she made clear on Thursday that she was losing patience with Israel's military approach.
"Israel has a right to defend itself. And how it does so matters," Harris said.

In March, she bluntly stated that Israel was not doing enough to ease a "humanitarian catastrophe" during its ground offensive in the Palestinian enclave. Later, she did not rule out "consequences" for Israel if it launched a full-scale invasion of refugee-packed Rafah in southern Gaza.

A DIVIDED PARTY

The Gaza conflict has splintered the Democratic Party, and sparked months of protests at Biden events. A drop in support among Arab Americans could hurt Democratic chances in Michigan, one of a handful of states likely to decide the Nov. 5 election.

In a nod to those concerns, Harris urged Americans to help "encourage efforts to understand the complexity, the nuance and the history of the region."

"To everyone who has been calling for a ceasefire and to everyone who yearns for peace, I see you and I hear you," she said. "Let's get the deal done so we can get a ceasefire to end the war."

In an Oval Office address on Wednesday, Biden cited a desire for unity in the Democratic Party as it seeks to defeat Trump as a main reason he decided not to seek reelection but to instead support Harris for the 2024 race.

Harris maintains closer ties to Democratic progressives, some of whom have urged Biden to attach conditions to U.S. weapons shipments to Israel out of concern for high Palestinian civilian casualties in Gaza. The U.S. is a major arms supplier to Israel and has protected the country from critical United Nations votes.

Biden and Netanyahu met together with the families of Americans held by Hamas, who expressed hope for a ceasefire including a release of hostages. "We came today with a sense of urgency," said Jonathan Dekel-Chen, whose son is a captive.

Reporting by Steve Holland and Jeff Mason; Additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt and Daphne Psaledakis; Editing by Heather Timmons, Howard Goller, Cynthia Osterman and Don Durfee



Jeff Mason

Thomson Reuters

Jeff Mason is a White House Correspondent for Reuters. He has covered the presidencies of Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden and the presidential campaigns of Biden, Trump, Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain. He served as president of the White House Correspondents’ Association in 2016-2017, leading the press corps in advocating for press freedom in the early days of the Trump administration. His and the WHCA's work was recognized with Deutsche Welle's "Freedom of Speech Award." Jeff has asked pointed questions of domestic and foreign leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea's Kim Jong Un. He is a winner of the WHCA's “Excellence in Presidential News Coverage Under Deadline Pressure" award and co-winner of the Association for Business Journalists' "Breaking News" award. Jeff began his career in Frankfurt, Germany as a business reporter before being posted to Brussels, Belgium, where he covered the European Union. Jeff appears regularly on television and radio and teaches political journalism at Georgetown University. He is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and a former Fulbright scholar.