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As the violence continued to rage in Gaza and on the West Bank – and Israeli protesters made their anger at their government felt on the streets of Tel Aviv – Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Washington for what was always going to be a fraught visit. “Netanyahu, at least do no harm in Washington,” ran the headline of an editorial in Haaretz newspaper as he flew out, noting that the “person who sabotaged – with his own hands, deliberately and directly – the longstanding, bipartisan American support is Netanyahu himself”.
No doubt the journalist who penned this editorial was thinking of the big news from the US election campaign that Joe Biden – a longstanding friend of Israel, with whom Netanyahu has mainly enjoyed cordial relations – had stepped down from the Democratic ticket and endorsed his vice-president, Kamala Harris, as his replacement. Harris’s views on Middle East politics are distinctly different to Biden’s – more of which later.
In the event, Harris was not in the chamber when Netanyahu addressed a joint sitting of Congress on July 24. Instead, she was at a campaign event in Indianapolis – something billed as a longstanding engagement, but which was nonetheless widely reported as a snub.
Harris wasn’t the only one not attending: only about half of the Democrat lawmakers were in the chamber to hear the Israeli prime minister, and many of those who didn’t attend were fairly upfront that they were actively boycotting the event.
Netanyahu took pains to thank Biden, who – he said – likes to refer to himself as a “proud Irish American Zionist”. But he was even more effusive about Donald Trump, listing the former (and perhaps future) US president’s achievements on behalf of Israel, including recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital: “That’s Jerusalem, our eternal capital, never to be divided again.”
John Strawson, emeritus professor of law at the University of East London, was watching intently as Netanyahu delivered his address. He’s been researching Israeli politics for several decades and, in a wide-ranging interview, gave his verdict on the speech and his views on the Israeli-Palestinian confict, telling me:
This was vintage Netanyahu. It was a speech full of bluster and empty rhetoric which went through his favourite buzzwords. He invoked terrorism, Iran, good versus evil, the Hebrew prophets and Winston Churchill, while using the pain of the hostage families and heroism of the Israel Defense Forces for his own glory.
Harris begs to differ
One person whose name Netanyahu failed to invoke in his address was the US vice-president. Harris would normally have sat behind the guest speaker in a joint sitting, but instead was preparing for a campaign event in Indianapolis – about an hour-and-a-half away as Airforce Two flies.
There was undoubtedly a degree of pragmatism in her inability to attend Netanyahu’s speech. The Democratic Party has been deeply divided over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Many in the party believe Biden’s firm support for Israel cost them votes in 2020. And, given the conflict in Gaza has become such an inflammatory issue – particularly among Muslim voters and young people, constituencies Harris needs to come out for her in force in November – she has to tread very carefully.
American vice-presidents usually toe the party line on foreign policy issues – but Harris has been unusually outspoken on Gaza, writes Andrew Payne, an expert in foreign policy and security at City, University of London. In a speech she delivered last December in Dubai after meeting with the heads of various Arab states, she took pains to stress that the US stands in solidarity with Israel, particularly after the brutal Hamas attacks of October 7. And she clearly stated Hamas is a terrorist organisation that cannot be conflated with the Palestinian people.
But she went on to stress that too many of those Palestinian people had been killed. While Israel has a right to defend itself, she said, “it matters how”.
Payne also notes that before Harris delivered another speech in March calling for an immediate ceasefire, National Security Council officials intervened to tone her comments down.
It’s hard to say whether Harris’s nuanced position on Israel and Palestine will have any effect when it comes to November’s election. Foreign policy is not necessarily a big issue at the ballot box. But some voters looking for an indication of character will compare Harris’s record on the issue to Trump’s far more partisan and blunt approach – as revealed during the debate with Biden in June, in which Trump called on America to let Israel “finish the job”. As Payne writes:
Harris’ and Trump’s positions on Israel illustrate that the choice in 2024 is between a candidate who is committed to defending the rules-based international order, and one who has a track record of undermining it.
Poliovirus rears its ugly head
To add to Gaza’s woes, it was recently reported that a variant of poliovirus had been detected in sewage samples collected in the region. Michael Toole, an epidemiologist and research fellow at the Burnet Institute in Australia, writes that while there have been no reports of cases of paralytic polio, the news is concerning nonetheless.
Effective vaccination programmes have all but wiped out wild poliovirus, of the type that traditionally affected both rich and poor countries. But there has been an increase in the incidence of vaccine-derived poliovirus, which seems to go hand-in-hand with poor sanitation. And it’s this form of the virus that appears to have reared its ugly head in Gaza, as Toole explains.
