Senior US Democrats on Sunday increased pressure on Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to abandon a planned offensive into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians are sheltering.
Two days after a similar call by the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, was rejected by the Israeli leader, Vice-President Kamala Harris said that the Joe Biden White House was “ruling out nothing” in terms of consequences if Netanyahu moves ahead with the assault.
Harris said that Washington had been “very clear in terms of our perspective on whether or not that should happen”.
“Any major military operation in Rafah would be a huge mistake,” Harris said on ABC’s This Week. “I have studied the maps – there’s nowhere for those folks to go. And we’re looking at about a million and a half people in Rafah who are there because they were told to go there.”
Harris declined to say if she, like Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, the most senior politician of the Jewish faith in the US, believed that Netanyahu was an obstacle to peace. But she said: “We’ve been very clear that far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.
“We have been very clear that Israel and the Israeli people and Palestinians are entitled to an equal amount of security and dignity.”
Her remarks came as political figures from progressive elements of the Democratic political established added their voices to the growing opposition to the humanitarian costs of Israel’s five-month military campaign on the Palestinian territory.
That air and ground campaign began after Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, killing more than 1,100 and taking hostages. The offensive has killed more than 30,000 people and pushed Gaza to the brink of famine.
On Friday, the New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused the Jewish state of committing “genocide” against the Palestinians and called on the US to suspend military aid to Israel.
She went further on Sunday, saying that Israel had “crossed the threshold of intent” in blocking humanitarian aid from reaching starving Gazans.
“Multiple governments [and other entities] have stated themselves plainly that the Israeli government and leaders in the Israeli government are intentionally denying, blocking and slow-walking this aid and are precipitating a mass famine,” she told ABC News.
“It is horrific. What we are seeing here, I think, with a forced famine, is beyond our ability to deny or explain away. There is no targeting of Hamas in precipitating a mass famine of a million people, half of whom are children.”
Netanyahu responded to US pressure on Friday by issuing a statement saying that he told Blinken there was no way to defeat Hamas without going into Rafah.
“And I told him that I hope we will do it with the support of the US, but if we have to – we will do it alone,” Netanyahu said.
The Anti-Defamation League, which campaigns against antisemitism, on Sunday wrote on X that Ocasio-Cortez’s “accusation lacks proper factual or legal foundation”.
“Genocide requires intent,” the ADL’s post said. “And Israel has been patently clear with its objectives: To cripple Hamas terrorists & release the hostages.”
Statements like Ocasio-Cortez’s “merely perpetuate false claims & foster hate”, the ADL contended.
Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday dismissed Netanyahu’s and the ADL’s positions. Regarding Netanyahu, Ocasio-Cortez said: “The actions of Hamas do not justify forcing thousands, hundreds of thousands of people to eat grass as their bodies consume themselves.
“We are talking about collective punishment, which is unjustifiable.”
On X, the congresswoman replied to the ADL: “Starving a million innocent people to death by halting and slowing US humanitarian assistance is massive, deliberate choice.
“Not only is it irrelevant to those objectives, it brings them further out of reach and endangers hostages. There is no defense for forced famine.”
Separately on Sunday, Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia – a key Black Democrat in Biden’s political coalition for re-election – was asked by CBS’s Face the Nation why the humanitarian crisis in Gaza had become a key issue for African American voters amid a broader discussion around US values.
“We in the African American community understand human struggle. We know it when we see it,” Warnock said. While the US cannot forget or turn away from the 7 October attack by Hamas, he said, “we cannot turn away from the scenes of awful suffering and human catastrophe in Gaza”.
“For Mr Netanyahu to go into Rafah, where some 1.4 million Palestinians are now sheltering, would be morally unjustifiable,” Warnock added. “It would be unconscionable. And I hope that at the end of the day, cooler heads will prevail.”
Asked if continuing to transfer military supplies to Israel was a sacrifice of US moral authority, Warnock instead acknowledged that “Israel lives in a dangerous neighborhood, and its enemies are more than just Hamas”.
“But look, we can walk and chew gum at the same time,” Warnock said. “We can be consistent in our support of Israel’s right to defend itself – and at the same time, be true to American values, and engage this catastrophic humanitarian situation that’s on the ground.”
