After Netanyahu’s meeting with Harris, pressure for cease-fire grows

Australia, Canada and New Zealand called Friday for an urgent cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, increasing the pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel a day after Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, declared she would “not be silent” about Palestinian suffering.

Netanyahu’s trip to Washington this week, which included White House meetings with Harris and President Joe Biden and a high-profile speech to Congress, has heightened criticism, both at home and abroad, of his ambivalent response to a proposed cease-fire deal that has been under negotiation for weeks.

He is meeting Friday with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has also called for an end to the war, in Florida.

“The situation in Gaza is catastrophic,” said a statement issued Friday by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia and signed by Justin Trudeau and Christopher Luxon, the leaders of Canada and New Zealand. “The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue.”

“We fully stand behind the comprehensive cease-fire deal, outlined by President Biden and endorsed by the U.N. Security Council,” the statement said. “We call on parties to the conflict to agree to the deal. Any delay will only see more lives lost.”

U.S. officials have said negotiators are close to sealing a deal and Netanyahu has recently hinted at the possibility that one would come soon. But the two sides remain fundamentally divided over when and how the war should end.

According to officials familiar with internal conversations, Israel’s defense agencies fear that Netanyahu will doom hopes for a cease-fire deal if he refuses to back down on some new demands, including his insistence that Israeli forces screen Palestinians for weapons at checkpoints as they move between southern and northern Gaza.

His U.S. visit came at an unusually fraught period in the U.S. presidential race, as Biden announced Sunday he would not run for a second term and Harris quickly became the presumptive Democratic nominee. But even Trump, who in the past has been strongly supportive of Netanyahu, expressed frustration with the Israeli leader’s stance on the truce deal.

Israel must end the war in Gaza “and get it done quickly,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News on Thursday, arguing that Israel was “getting decimated” by negative publicity over its conduct of the war.

Palestinian health authorities say that more than 39,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the conflict started and the enclave has been devastated by incessant Israeli airstrikes and fighting.

After her meeting with Netanyahu, Harris offered strong backing for Israel’s right to defend itself from terrorism. But she added that “far too many innocent civilians” had died in Gaza.

“I will not be silent about their suffering,” she said.

The comments were the first significant statements she has made on foreign policy since Biden’s announcement and were closely watched by both Israeli and Palestinian analysts for any sign that, if she were elected, her policies would deviate from those of Biden.

Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who plays an important role in Netanyahu’s governing coalition, criticized the comments. A cease-fire on the terms that have been outlined would amount to surrender to Hamas, he said, adding: “Do not fall into this trap.”

Another far right leader, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, addressed Harris bluntly: “There will be no cease-fire, Lady presidential candidate,” he said on social media.

Netanyahu and Biden also met with the families of hostages in Washington. Afterward, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a grassroots citizens group, said that it had emphasized a “desire to get this deal done,” adding that it was up to Hamas to agree to the deal.

“We feel probably more optimistic than we have since the first round of releases in late November,” the group went on to say, referring to the time when Israel and Hamas observed a one-week cease-fire that was accompanied by the release of about 100 hostages.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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