Vice President Kamala Harris played a key role in the pressure campaign to keep Israel out of the Gazan city of Rafah months before an Ame...
Vice President Kamala Harris played a key role in the pressure campaign to keep Israel out of the Gazan city of Rafah months before an American hostage was found dead on Sunday.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops found the body of 23-year-old American-Israeli Hersh Goldberg-Polin along with the bodies of five other deceased hostages in a tunnel underneath Rafah on Sunday. The hostages were killed not long before their bodies were discovered, according to the Israeli military.
Harris and the Biden administration leaned on Israel to stay out of Rafah for months despite significant numbers of Hamas militants and dozens of hostages, including some Americans, believed to be located in the city. Israel moved tanks into place around the city in March, preparing for extensive military operations.
The IDF has found and rescued at least nine hostages from Rafah so far, including one last week: Qaid Farhan Al-Qadi, an Israeli. Hamas continues to hold 101 hostages in Gaza, according to the IDF.
Harris appeared on ABC News in March and said military operations in Rafah would be a “big mistake.”
“We have been clear in multiple conversations and in every way that any major military operation in Rafah would be a huge mistake,” Harris said at the time.
“I have studied the maps. There’s nowhere for those folks to go,” she continued, referring to civilians pushed into Rafah to avoid fighting elsewhere in Gaza. “We’ve been very clear that it would be a mistake to move into Rafah with any type of military operation.”
When asked if the United States would impose “consequences” if Israel invaded Rafah, Harris responded that she is “ruling out nothing.”
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer later in March calledfor an end to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in the middle of Israel’s war against Hamas and rising tensions between the Jewish state and Iran-backed terror groups throughout the region.
“At this critical juncture, I believe a new election is the only way to allow for a healthy and open decision-making process about the future of Israel, at a time when so many Israelis have lost their confidence in the vision and direction of their government,” Schumer said at the time.
Rafah is the last stronghold of Hamas and believed to hold dozens of hostages from the terror group’s October 7 assault and massacre of roughly 1,200 people in Israel. Israel began major military operations in Rafah in May.
The Biden administration increased the pressure campaign in May. President Joe Biden threatened Israel that if the IDF invaded Rafah, the U.S. would cut off some weapons shipments.
“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah – they haven’t gone in Rafah yet – if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem,” Biden said in a May 8 interview on CNN.
Prior to Biden’s interview, his administration paused a shipment of thousands of explosives to Israel that included both 2,000-pound and 500-pound bombs.
“Israel should not launch a major ground operation in Rafah, where more than a million people are sheltering with nowhere else to go,” a senior administration official told The Washington Post at the time. “We are especially focused on the end-use of the 2,000-pound bombs and the impact they could have in dense urban settings as we have seen in other parts of Gaza.”
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