(Washington) After remarks of unprecedented firmness on Israel’s responsibility for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, American Vice-President Kamala Harris receives on Monday Benny Gantz, member of the Israeli war cabinet, and great political rival of the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The influential centrist will also be received by the American national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, and will also meet with the head of diplomacy Antony Blinken, during a visit which is causing cringe within the executive. Israeli.
Doudi Amsellem, Israeli Minister for Regional Cooperation, criticized Benny Gantz, whose party enjoys solid popularity, of playing the “Trojan horse” to the detriment of government “unity”.
The White House, for its part, said that the meeting with Kamala Harris, campaigning with President Joe Biden for a second term, was to focus on “a temporary ceasefire” and “the need to significantly increase” humanitarian aid to Gaza.
“The Israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid. There are no excuses,” the 59-year-old Democrat declared on Sunday, words of unprecedented firmness from a senior American official.
Calling for an “immediate” end to hostilities, she added that Israel “must open new crossing points” without “imposing unnecessary restrictions on the delivery of aid”.
Famine
The vice-president issued this warning in a highly symbolic place and moment: she was speaking in Selma, Alabama (south), where the famous marches for civil rights.
Kamalas Harris, however, stressed, in tune with other American officials who spoke this weekend, that the entry into force of a temporary six-week ceasefire in Gaza now depended on Hamas, after, according to American officials, a green light in principle from the Israeli government.
The latter, according to Washington, accepted the broad outlines of an agreement which would allow the release of certain hostages held in the enclave since the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist group against Israel on October 7, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
A cessation of fighting should also, according to the American authorities, make it possible to considerably increase the arrival of food and aid in the territory threatened by famine.
Faced with a heavy human toll and a catastrophic humanitarian situation, representatives of Egypt, Qatar and the United States – mediator countries – have resumed negotiations in Cairo with a view to a truce, a television close to Egyptian intelligence speaking of “significant progress” on Sunday. A Hamas delegation is also in the Egyptian capital.
As the war will soon enter its sixth month, famine is “almost inevitable”, according to the UN, for 2.2 million of the 2.4 million inhabitants of this cramped territory on which Israel has already imposed a blockade since 2007 .
Kamala Harris has been worried for several months about the impact on part of the Democratic electorate of the posture of firm support for Israel adopted by Joe Biden and most of his lieutenants – Jake Sullivan had, for example, said that the attack on October 7 against Israel was a “personal” matter for the American authorities.
During the recent Democratic primary in Michigan, a state with a large Muslim and Arab population, a little more than 100,000 people slipped the equivalent of a blank ballot into the ballot box, thus marking their rejection of the line of the American president.