Harris bid for Oval Office puts spotlight on foreign policy track record

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington and prepares for a July 24 address to Congress, CIP executive vice president Matt Duss discusses Kamala Harris’s record on Israel-Palestine. The Hill’s Laura Kelly and Rafael Bernal report:

Advocates for a tougher U.S. policy towards Israel point to Harris’s March speech in Selma, Ala., as a promising example of the vice president addressing the plight of Palestinians at a time when Biden was under increasing pressure to hold back weapons deliveries to Israel over the toll of death and destruction in the Gaza Strip amid its war against Hamas.

“The Israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid [to Palestinians]. No excuses,” Harris said to applause.

“She really lifted up the humanitarian crisis in Gaza in a much more aggressive way, much more critical of the Israeli government’s approach there. I think that was noticed by everyone,” said Matt Duss, executive vice president for the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

But it’s unclear if Harris’s speech represented a major policy difference or only a shift in rhetoric. Stepping forward as a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, she now has an opportunity to articulate what she wants to do differently, Duss said.

He added it’s an important signal that she will not attend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on Wednesday. A number of Democratic lawmakers have announced they will boycott the speech, largely progressives.

“I hope and expect that she and her team will engage with the whole array of voices that make up the Democratic Party, and that includes its growing progressive [wing].”

Read the full story in The Hill here.