Harris Calls for Cease-fire and Hostage Release, after Netanyahu Meeting

The Washington Post

18:53 JST, July 26, 2024

Vice President Harris implored Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday to accept a cease-fire deal that would pause the fighting in Gaza and release hostages, as U.S. leaders say they are closer than ever to an agreement.

“Let’s get the deal done so we can get a cease-fire to end the war,” she told reporters in brief remarks after her bilateral meeting with Netanyahu at the White House. “Let’s bring the hostages home, and let’s provide much-needed relief to the Palestinian people.”

Harris’s decision to give her full backing for the deal and explain its general outline appeared designed to add pressure on Israel and Hamas to close the remaining gaps in reaching an agreement to at least temporarily end more than nine months of conflict.

That it was the vice president, not President Biden, giving public remarks after they each held bilateral meetings with the Israeli leader reflected how much has changed in Washington in recent days. Biden announced Sunday he was exiting the presidential race; by Tuesday, Harris had become the likely Democratic nominee.

In her remarks, Harris reiterated that she remains a firm backer of Israel, reflecting on collecting money to plant trees in Israel as a young girl, while also expressing serious concern about some of Israel’s conduct in its unrelenting military campaign in Gaza.

As Harris moves forward in the presidential race, she will find herself needing to further define her positions on key issues, especially the Israel-Gaza war, and where, if any, there is daylight between her and the president.

Harris has not publicly diverged from Biden’s approach to the war, but she has pushed the administration to more heavily consider Palestinian suffering in its response and often been the highest-profile official to speak emphatically about civilian casualties.

“Israel has a right to defend itself, and how it does so matters,” Harris said, adding that she has “serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza, including the death of far too many innocent civilians,” and “images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety.”

“We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering, and I will not be silent,” she said.

John Kirby, a White House spokesman, said Harris has “been a full partner in our policies in the Middle East, particularly with our policies toward Israel and the war in Gaza.” He added that she has been involved in nearly every conversation between Biden and Netanyahu since the conflict began.

On Thursday morning, as part of that continuing balancing act, Harris – not Biden – released a strongly worded statement about the protests near the U.S. Capitol, while Netanyahu was delivering an address to Congress, calling out “despicable acts by unpatriotic protesters and dangerous hate-fueled rhetoric.”

“I condemn any individuals associating with the brutal terrorist organization Hamas, which has vowed to annihilate the State of Israel and kill Jews,” she said. “Pro-Hamas graffiti and rhetoric is abhorrent, and we must not tolerate it in our nation.”

Before he met with Harris, the Israeli leader met with Biden, whom he has known for decades, in the Oval Office. The two leaders appeared genial at the start of their meeting, despite deep underlying tensions over the ongoing conflict and a path forward.

“Well, welcome back, Mr. Prime Minister,” Biden said before the meeting. “We’ve got a lot to talk about. I think we should get to it.”

Biden has repeatedly said a cease-fire deal was imminent in recent weeks, even though the United States and other negotiating partners have been frustrated for months by the lack of an agreement.

The meetings, part of Netanyahu’s hours-long visit to the White House, came a day after the Israeli leader delivered a defiant speech to a joint meeting of Congress. Netanyahu rejected criticisms from international organizations about Israel’s conduct, posited without evidence that Iran was funding pro-Palestinian protesters surrounding the Capitol, and vowed Israel would settle for nothing less than “total victory.”

Since announcing his decision not to seek reelection, Biden has said ending the war remains a top priority in his final months in office.

“I’m going to keep working to end the war in Gaza, bring home all the hostages, and bring peace and security to the Middle East and end this war,” Biden said Wednesday during his Oval Office address.

Kirby told reporters Thursday that the negotiating parties are closer “than we’ve been before” to a deal, though he emphasized there are still important gaps to bridge.

The first phase of an agreement would include a six-week pause in fighting and the release of some hostages. The second phase would continue a cessation of hostilities while Hamas and Israel negotiate a permanent cease-fire, determining the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

Biden’s meeting on Thursday was his first face-to-face encounter with Netanyahu since the president traveled to Israel in the days after the Oct. 7 attacks. Thursday marked only the second time Harris met with Netanyahu, a White House official said. They met once in 2017 when she was in the Senate; since the Oct. 7 attacks, she has been on more than 20 calls between Biden and Netanyahu.

The president tightly embraced Israel in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attacks, but as Netanyahu has continued an all-out assault on Gaza, he has become more critical, calling on Israeli leaders to allow more aid into the territory, where nearly 2 million civilians are suffering from widespread starvation and a collapsed health-care system.

In his brief public remarks, Netanyahu spoke warmly about Biden, though after leaving the White House, the Israeli leader will head to Mar-a-Lago to meet with former president Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president.

“From a proud Jewish Zionist to a proud Irish American Zionist, I want to thank you for 50 years of public service and 50 years of support for the state of Israel,” Netanyahu said to Biden.

Despite the ongoing tensions, Kirby said Biden and Netanyahu have a “healthy relationship,” though he did not know if the president had watched Netanyahu’s speech on Wednesday.

“And by healthy, I mean they’re not going to agree on everything,” Kirby said. “They haven’t, through the long political lives that both of them have enjoyed, always agreed on everything. They come from two different political traditions, but they know one another.”

After their bilateral meeting in the Oval Office, the two leaders met with families of Americans held hostage by Hamas. By including the families, the White House hoped to elevate their message that Netanyahu needs to stop making new demands and agree to the hostage cease-fire deal on the table, officials familiar with the matter said.

Netanyahu’s government is negotiating for the release of more than 100 Israeli hostages, though of that number, many are believed to be dead.

Following their meeting with Biden and Netanyahu, the hostage families said they were now “more optimistic” than at any other time since November, when Hamas released more than 100 people in the war’s first – and only – negotiated hostage release, said Jonathan Dekel-Chen, father of American hostage Sagui Dekel-Chen.

Speaking in front of cameras outside the West Wing, Jonathan Dekel-Chen said the families were given “absolute commitment from the Biden administration and from Netanyahu that they understand the urgency of this moment now to waste no time and to complete this deal as it currently stands, with as little change as humanly possible within it.”

The families also emphasized the convergence among Biden, Harris and Trump in supporting an immediate deal.

“We’ve got a rare moment now where the current president of the United States, and anybody who might become president of the United States – both Vice President Harris and Donald Trump – are all aligned in saying this deal must get done now,” said Jon Polin, father of American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin.

Since the start of the Gaza war, Netanyahu has come under criticism for putting his military objectives related to the total destruction of Hamas ahead of the urgency of securing the release of hostages.

Earlier this summer, the United States blamed Hamas for adding new demands to the deal, but that outlook shifted earlier this month when Netanyahu directed Mossad chief David Barnea to negotiate further stipulations that moved the goal posts, said diplomats who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations.

Under the new conditions, Israel would not agree to withdraw its forces from the Philadelphi Corridor along the Egyptian border, the diplomats said. Israel would also not allow unrestricted access for Gazans seeking to return to their homes in the north – insisting that its forces be permitted to establish checkpoints to monitor the movement of the displaced.