Kamala Harris’s Israel Quandary

Today on TAP: She needs to signal a new policy. But with Biden sticking to the current one, that will be far from easy.

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On Saturday, Israel struck another school-turned-shelter in northern Gaza, this time killing at least 100 people, including dozens of children. The Israeli government made the usual excuse that the complex was also sheltering Hamas.

The White House didn’t even bother to protest. These attacks have become all too routine. At least 17 school buildings have been targeted over the last month, killing at least 163 Palestinians, according to the United Nations.

Instead, President Biden’s national-security spokesman, John Kirby, in a carefully calibrated bank shot that avoided criticism of Prime Minister Netanyahu, called out Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich for opposing any deal that would trade a hostage release for a cease-fire. But of course Smotrich serves in Netanyahu’s government.

In the latest in a long series of feints, Netanyahu late last week agreed to resume settlement talks with Hamas, after destroying the talks with the assassination of the lead Hamas negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh. And yesterday, running true to form, the Israeli government ordered the mass evacuation of thousands of Gazan refugees from a zone in Khan Yunis that Israel had previously encouraged refugees to view as safe.

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On Wednesday, campaigning in Michigan, Kamala Harris was heckled by pro-Palestinian demonstrators. As she was honing her attack on Donald Trump, chants broke out, “Kamala! Kamala! You can’t hide! We won’t vote for genocide!”

Harris eventually shut them down by saying, “You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.”

But these protesters are not going away. Harris’s effective deadline for offering some policy change is the Democratic National Convention, which begins in just a week in Chicago, where more disruptive protests are planned.

So far, Harris has taken only baby steps toward a different policy. At a campaign event in Phoenix, Harris said that “far too many” Palestinians had been killed “yet again,” adding that Israel had a right to “go after Hamas” but also has “an important responsibility” to avoid civilian casualties.

But words alone, as Biden has repeatedly found to his humiliation, do not change Israel’s policy.

I have no inside sources on this, but it’s very likely that Harris is already considering her options to further distance herself from Biden’s Middle East policy of all but total support for Israel, as Israel’s assaults on Palestinian civilians become relentlessly more murderous.

If Harris does propose a dramatically different stance for the U.S., she would be wise to line up in advance the support of leading American friends of Israel, most notably Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. That would help bulletproof Harris from charges of abandoning Israel, much less of antisemitism. But even more complex will be a strategy to persuade Joe Biden to go along.

This necessary pivot suggests precise echoes of vice president and Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey’s efforts to shift Vietnam War policy in 1968, after Lyndon Johnson announced he was not running for re-election. But Johnson was not supportive and Humphrey’s shifts proved too little and too late.

Before Harris can try her hand at crucial Mideast diplomacy, she needs to achieve some very adroit domestic diplomacy.

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