Harris Urges Netanyahu to Finalize Gaza Cease-Fire Deal After White House Meeting

US Vice President Kamala Harris meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Vice President’s ceremonial office at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC, on July 25, 2024. (Photo by ROBERTO SCHMIDT / AFP)

Vice President Kamala Harris on July 25 urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to finalize a deal to end the war in the Gaza Strip during a closed-door meeting at the White House.

President Joe Biden and other members of the administration have signaled that negotiators for Israel and the Hamas terrorist group are closing in on a deal to see the end of a nearly 10-month-old war and win the release of remaining hostages Hamas took during its attacks across southern Israel on Oct. 7.

The president announced on July 12 that Israeli and Hamas negotiators had both committed to a cease-fire framework. Mr. Netanyahu, however, made no mention of those talks during his historic fourth address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on July 24.

The president and the vice president both held private meetings with Mr. Netanyahu for separate White House talks the day after the address. The president and vice president both reemphasized the peace talks during these meetings, according to brief White House readouts of the conversations.

Though the White House has offered no official transcripts of these two meetings, Ms. Harris appeared to briefly summarize her conversation with Mr. Netanyahu later on Thursday evening. The vice president condemned the Oct. 7 attacks, in which Hamas killed around 1,200 people in a surprise attack on southern Israel and took around 250 hostages back to the Gaza Strip. She went on to affirm Israel has a right to defend itself but said that “how it does so matters.”

“I also expressed with the prime minister my serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza, including the death of far too many innocent civilians,” Ms. Harris said. “And I made clear my serious concern about the dire humanitarian situation there, with over 2 million people facing high levels of food insecurity and half a million people facing catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity.”

Ms. Harris expressed further dismay at the images of dead children and the accounts of Gazan civilians repeatedly having to pack up and relocate to safety throughout Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in the Gaza Strip since the Oct. 7 attack.

The Israeli prime minister has insisted throughout the war that he seeks to eliminate Hamas and return all of the surviving Oct. 7 hostages. Throughout the negotiations, Hamas has sought to trade the hostages for a deal requiring Israeli forces to leave the Gaza Strip and end the war on terms that might leave the terror group intact.

During his July 24 congressional address, Mr. Netanyahu said the war could end if Hamas surrendered, disarmed, and returned all of its hostages. Short of Hamas’s voluntary surrender, Mr. Netanyahu vowed that “Israel will fight until we destroy Hamas’ military capabilities and its rule in Gaza and bring all our hostages home.”

“That’s what total victory means and we will settle for nothing less,” he said.

Responding to Mr. Netanyahu’s speech, the Biden administration has repeatedly pointed back to the cease-fire deal as the best path forward.

“There has been hopeful movement in the talks to secure an agreement on this deal, and as I just told Prime Minister Netanyahu, it is time to get this deal done,” Ms. Harris said on Thursday evening.

Mr. Netanyahu has yet to offer any public comment since his meeting with the vice president. The Epoch Times reached out to the Israeli prime minister’s office for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.