Harris says US strongly opposes ‘forced relocation of Palestinians from Gaza’
Vice President Kamala Harris said Saturday that the United States strongly opposes the forcible relocation of Gaza residents outside the enclave as Israel resumes its bombardment of Hamas terrorists or in the days and weeks after the war finally ends.
In a statement after a meeting with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt in Dubai, officials said Ms. Harris rejected the idea of moving Palestinians to Egypt or refugee camps elsewhere and issued her strongest statement yet urging Israel to reduce harm to civilians in his country. war campaign.
“The Vice President reiterated that under no circumstances will the United States authorize the forced relocation of Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank,” the White House statement said.
She also rejected an idea recently floated by some Israeli officials that Gaza’s borders could shrink after the war ends to accommodate a security buffer zone between Gaza’s interior and Israel. The statement said the United States would not allow “the redrawing of Gaza’s borders.”
Ms Harris made the stern comments after a daylong diplomatic blitz with the leaders of four Arab countries in Dubai, where she was attending the United Nations global climate summit known as COP28. Her trip was billed as climate-related, but she spent much more time meeting and talking to Arab leaders about the war between Israel and Hamas.
After flying nearly 15 hours from Washington, Ms. Harris met with Mr. el-Sisi, King Abdullah of Jordan and President Mohammed bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates. She also spoke in a lengthy telephone conversation with Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar.
White House officials said the vice president had no plans to travel to Israel and would return to the United States on Sunday. The officials said Ms. Harris had taken part in several meetings with top Israeli politicians over the past eight weeks.
At a brief news conference in Dubai, Ms. Harris said her conversations had focused on what Israel and Hamas — and the rest of the Middle East countries — should do once the war is over.
“If this conflict ends, Hamas will no longer be able to control Gaza and Israel must be safe,” she said. “The Palestinians need a hopeful political horizon, economic opportunity and freedom. And the broader region must be integrated and prosperous. And we have to work towards that.”
The vice president declined to say whether she had received specific commitments from the four Arab leaders to help in a post-war period. She said other countries should help with “reconstruction, security and governance,” but spoke only in generalities about what Jordan, Egypt, the Emirates or Qatar could do to rebuild Gaza or help ensure security and stability.
Ms. Harris also declined to say whether she believed Israel was acting in accordance with U.S. demands to better target its military strikes and minimize civilian casualties. The Gaza Health Ministry said in a statement on Saturday afternoon that 193 people had been killed in the past few hours.
“I don’t have the details to tell you exactly who was killed,” she told reporters on Saturday evening. “But I will say that we have been very clear about our position on this, which is that innocent civilian lives should not be deliberately targeted, and that Israel must do more to protect innocent lives.”
A senior Biden administration official said the president’s team believed the Israeli government and military were taking steps to be more precise in their attacks now that fighting has resumed. But the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic talks, declined to comment on an Israeli attack in Khan Younis this weekend that killed civilians.
The vice president’s warning that Gaza’s borders should not be changed came after Israeli officials floated the idea. “The territory of Gaza will be smaller at the end of the war,” Foreign Minister Eli Cohen told Israel’s right-wing Channel 14 in mid-October.
Asked about a potential buffer zone in Gaza, Mark Regev, a senior adviser to Mr. Netanyahu, said in a media briefing on Saturday that Israel was looking for a “security envelope” in the enclave.
“In a post-Hamas reality, Israel will maintain overall security control for the foreseeable future. That will be a necessary condition,” Mr Regev told reporters. “There will no longer be a situation in the future where Hamas terrorists can be directly at the border.”
“This is not Israel taking territory from Gaza,” Mr Regev added. “On land, that means creating security zones, where you have a special situation on the ground that limits people’s ability to enter Israel to kill our people.”
When Ms. Harris was asked specifically about a buffer zone in Gaza, she told reporters that the United States had “no influence on that.”
But her earlier statement about refusing to make any changes to Gaza’s borders seemed to rule out such an idea.