US Vice President Kamala Harris has spoken of her “serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza” during talks in Washington with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The pair met to discuss the war in Gaza and the possibility of securing a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.
“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 in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering and I will not be silent,” said Harris.
Harris described her talks with Netanyahu as “frank and constructive” and said that while she accepts Israel’s right to defend itself, “how it does so matters”.
Netanyahu’s first White House visit since 2020 comes a day after he gave a fiery speech to Congress in which he vowed “total victory” over Hamas and denounced American opponents of the war in Gaza as “idiots”.
The visit also comes at a time of growing pressure in Israel and the US to find an endgame to the nine-month war that’s left more than 39,000 dead in Gaza and some 1,200 dead in Israel.
Netanyahu’s talks with Harris, who is widely expected to be the Democrat presidential nominee after Joe Biden announced last week he wouldn’t run for office again, came after a meeting with the outgoing president earlier on Thursday.
Biden is pressing to get Israel and Hamas to seal his proposal to release remaining hostages in Gaza over three phases, something that would be a legacy-affirming achievement for the 81-year-old president.
White House officials say ceasefire negotiations, which have stumbled along for weeks, are in the closing stages but there are still issues that need to be resolved.
Also on Thursday, the State Department urged the Israeli government to think carefully about the future of Gaza after the war between Israel and Hamas is over.
“In the absence of realistic plans for the day after the conflict, you will either have Israel occupying Gaza, which we reject. You will have Hamas in charge, which obviously is not in the interest of Israel or you’ll have chaos and anarchy,” said spokesperson Matthew Miller.
“So we’re going to continue to push them to engage seriously on these plans because they’re critical not just to the future of the Palestinian people but to the future of Israel as well.”
Meanwhile, the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has called the humanitarian situation in Gaza a “total disaster”.
“So with total insecurity, total lawlessness and then all the obstacles of a permanent negotiation in which difficulty after difficulty is put in relation to security equipment, in relation to the so-called dual use items and all other things that are needed for an effective humanitarian needs. With the combination of these obstacles, humanitarian aid is far from being sufficient,” he said.
Euronews
