Washington.- In her first week as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris will face the most politically controversial issue in U.S. foreign policy with an official visit to Washington by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu’s trip puts the spotlight on the views of Harris, who has become a forceful voice in the war between Israel and Hamas, particularly in speaking out about the plight of innocent Palestinians. In a civil rights speech this year in Selma, Alabama, Ms. Harris garnered attention for calling for an “immediate ceasefire” and attacking Israel for creating a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza.
Harris will meet privately with the Israeli leader at the White House. However, her comments before and after the conversation will be closely watched for signals about her approach to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza should she win the White House in November.
President Biden, who is set to meet Netanyahu on Thursday, has seen his popularity among progressive Democratic voters plummet as he resisted their calls to halt the flow of American weapons to Israel. The damage has been severe in key states like Michigan. Democrats hope Harris will largely shake off that stigma and win back liberals who have said they could never vote for Biden because of his Israel policy.
According to White House officials, Harris plans to skip Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, which will certainly not hurt her efforts. Instead, she will keep a longstanding commitment to speak at an event in Indiana hosted by one of the country’s largest historically black sororities.
Although Harris has been more critical of the Gaza war than Biden, she is not expected to express to Netanyahu any views that differ from current policy during their meeting.
It’s unclear how far their views differ. Even his call for a cease-fire, which generated headlines suggesting renewed U.S. pressure on Israel, was consistent with Biden’s stance — a demand that Hamas accept an Israeli proposal to stop fighting in exchange for the release of hostages held in Gaza. But his tone and emphasis on human suffering marked a dramatic rhetorical shift in how the administration discussed the cost of war.
But experts and voters say Ms. Harris’ approach to the week will need to be closely watched, particularly for signs of a shift on the hotly debated question of whether the United States should condition military aid to Israel on limiting Palestinian civilian casualties.
Josh Paul, who resigned from the State Department last fall in protest at Biden’s continued arms deliveries to Israel, warned that political dynamics would limit Harris’ ability to make sweeping changes. But he said Harris would “certainly show more pragmatism and flexibility than Biden, and in her public comments she has also demonstrated a much more humanizing approach toward Palestinians over the past year.”
During the meeting with Netanyahu, Harris is expected to reiterate US support for Israel’s war in Gaza, which began after Hamas attacks on October 7 that killed more than 1,200 people. She will also express deep concern about the Palestinian death toll, which has surpassed 38,000, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and advocate that Netanyahu try to reach a ceasefire agreement with Hamas as soon as possible.
There is no evidence that Harris raised any internal objections to Biden’s Israel policy. But she has pushed administration officials, including the president, to express more sympathy for the Palestinians as the death toll in Gaza mounted. And analysts say she played a notable public role in expressing harsher criticism of Netanyahu’s government than Biden was able to muster, whether for personal or diplomatic reasons.
Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said Harris had demonstrated a “capacity for public empathy” toward Palestinians.
“That’s something the president himself has clearly struggled with,” she said. “And empathy is not something you can fake. I think people realize that. And I think that’s been the biggest difference.”
Mr. Elgindy said it was difficult to know whether Ms. Harris might intend to change U.S. policy on Israel if elected. But he and other analysts said she does not appear to share the same emotional connection to Israel as Mr. Biden, who has declared himself a Zionist.
Ms. Harris has also impressed some critics of the war and irritated Israel hawks with expressions of sympathy toward campus activists protesting the war. “They are showing exactly what human emotion should be in response to Gaza,” Ms. Harris told The Nation magazine. While noting that protesters have said some things “that I absolutely reject,” she added, “I understand the emotion behind it.”
Some analysts point out that her husband, Doug Emhoff, is Jewish and has taken an active stance against rising anti-Semitism on college campuses and elsewhere. But American Jews themselves are sharply divided over U.S. policy toward Israel, and their personal views are unclear.
Ms. Harris has been largely spared the protests and vitriol that have dogged Mr. Biden, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and other American officials, who have been cried foul and complicit in “genocide.”
A national group created in protest of the war to urge voters in several states to cast “uncommitted” ballots has expressed cautious optimism about Ms. Harris.
“While the vice presidency is limited, many believe she would be an improvement over Biden’s severe lack of empathy toward Palestinians and his ties to the AIPAC old guard in the party,” said Waleed Shahid, co-founder of the National Uncommitted Movement. AIPAC, or the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, champions the group’s hawkish definition of Israeli security in Washington.
“However, challenging AIPAC’s power within the Democratic Party establishment remains a formidable task, regardless of who the nominee is,” he added.
Aides to Ms. Harris said she remained steadfast in her support for Israel. She has been equally forceful in her condemnation of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, and last month held a forum highlighting the sexual violence perpetuated against Israeli victims during the attacks. She has also met with the families of American hostages.
Aides say he has maintained contacts with Israeli officials and has spoken regularly with President Isaac Herzog and Benny Gantz, a former member of Israel’s war cabinet. He has participated in more than 20 calls between Biden and Netanyahu.
Harris has also played a key role in diplomatic talks with Arab leaders after relations became strained by the war.
In December, Harris used a whirlwind trip to Dubai, where she stood in for Biden to represent the United States at the United Nations climate summit, to convene the first in-person meetings by the vice president or president with Arab leaders since the Oct. 7 attacks. Several Arab allies had been reluctant to work with the United States on postwar planning.
Following the meetings, Harris announced U.S. opposition to the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza and outlined a three-pronged plan to rebuild, secure and govern Gaza after the war ends.
Speaking to reporters at the State Department on Tuesday, Mr Blinken said Ms Harris had been “deeply engaged in the Middle East, in trying to find a peaceful path forward.”
And at a forum hosted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on Tuesday, Stuart Eizenstat, a veteran diplomat with experience in the Middle East, predicted that if elected, Ms. Harris would likely rely on advisers who are likely to “be those steeped in the mainstream Democratic support for Israel.”
Those officials “will be the kind of people we have now – they come from the same institutions, they have the same views,” said Mr. Eizenstat, who advises Mr. Blinken on Holocaust-related issues.
And before Oct. 7, Ms. Harris had taken an uncritical stance toward Israel. Three months after becoming a senator in 2017, Ms. Harris spoke at AIPAC’s annual convention, a role she called an “honor.”
During her speech, she boasted that her first act as a senator was to co-sponsor a resolution condemning a U.N. Security Council call for Israel to “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” Harris called the U.N. measure, which President Barack Obama refused to veto, an obstacle to an eventual peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians.
“As Hamas maintains its control of Gaza and fires rockets across Israel’s southern border, we must stand with Israel,” he said later in the speech.
Joel Rubin, a national security expert who has worked with pro-Israel organizations, said Harris’s actions this week were unlikely to alter the status quo.
“People on the left might be angry at her for meeting with the prime minister, people on the right might be angry at her for not sitting behind him” during her speech to Congress, said Rubin, who also served as a deputy assistant secretary of state in the Obama administration. “But she is taking the position of an American leader who is balancing her responsibilities.”
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