Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has pressed Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu on the “dire” humanitarian situation in Gaza in talks that she described as frank, adding “I will not be silent,” Ednews informs via The Guardian.
In comments that were closely watched for signs of a shift from Joe Biden’s policy approach, the US vice-president said after the meeting: “What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating. The images of dead children and desperate hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time.”
She acknowledged that “Israel has a right to defend itself” and denounced Hamas as a brutal terrorist organisation that triggered the war and had committed ‘“horrific acts of sexual violence” but she made clear that how Israel defended itself mattered, adding later: “We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies [in Gaza]. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering and I will not be silent.”
She called for the establishment of a Palestinian state and for Netanyahu and Hamas to agree a ceasefire and hostage release deal to end a war she said had led to the deaths of far too many innocent civilians. “As I just told Prime Minister Netanyahu, it is time to get this deal done,” she said.
