Gaza: Sticking points for Democrats ahead of party conference

The Democratic Party convention is scheduled to begin on Monday as protests in the Gaza Strip threaten to overshadow the expected appearance of Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s presidential candidate.

The Harris campaign team hopes that the convention in Chicago will be a celebration after President Joe Biden’s abrupt Withdrew from the race in July.

But some fear that an intra-party debate over the Gaza war could undermine Democratic unity during the convention and in the run-up to the November elections – less than 80 days away.

The convention will culminate in a prime-time speech by Ms Harris on Thursday after she formally accepts the party’s nomination.

President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former President Barack Obama, other party bigwigs and a star-studded cast of actors and entertainers will take the stage at Chicago’s United Center this week to praise the vice president and ramp up their attacks on former President Donald Trump, her Republican challenger.

What remains unclear, however, is how the Harris campaign team and the Democratic Party will deal with the sensitive nature of their policies toward Israel and the Gaza conflict.

The Harris campaign team did not respond to a request for comment.

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza with the aim of destroying Hamas after the group attacked southern Israel on October 7. The unprecedented attack killed about 1,200 people and took 251 hostage.

Israel has faced international criticism for the high number of civilian casualties in its offensive. The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza says more than 40,000 people have been killed since October.

Mrs Harris, who embarked on a bus tour through Western Pennsylvania before flying to Chicago on Sundayhas not announced a clear policy on Gaza and Israel. Her nascent election campaign has so far only put forward a series of economic proposals and is under pressure to reveal more details on her political agenda.

However, she called for a ceasefire and respectful treatment of protesters at their rallies. She also recently said: “far too many” civilians was killed, but did not support an arms embargo against Israel, as some progressives had called for.

Opposition to the Biden administration’s handling of the conflict led to more than 750,000 people voting “undecided” and not for a particular candidate in the Democratic presidential primary earlier this year, raising fears that those voters might stay home or give their ballots to a third party.

While the energy of this “undecided” campaign has waned somewhat in recent weeks amid the party’s excitement over Ms. Harris’s candidacy, the presence of those votes in key swing states like Michigan will still be felt at the convention.

Only three dozen delegates at the Democratic Convention represent the “undecided” voters, but they speak for hundreds of thousands of dissatisfied voters.

These delegates – many of them longtime Democratic organizers – will be far outnumbered by the more than 4,500 delegates who have pledged their support for Ms. Harris.

Still, they said they plan to spend the week of the convention pressuring the Harris campaign and her party to take action on Gaza.

“We know this is no small undertaking. We are challenging the status quo of U.S. policy over the last 40 years, and that will not change overnight,” said Samuel Doten, a Democratic organizer and “undecided” delegate.

Several “undecided” delegates said they hoped to persuade other convention attendees to sign their letter calling on Ms Harris and the Democratic Party to support a ceasefire and an arms embargo against Israel.

They stressed that their goal was not to thwart the convention or the election, but to push the party to pursue policies that they believed would be popular with Democratic voters.

“There are thousands of voters across the United States who voted ‘undecided,’ so it’s a huge responsibility for us to represent their wishes and make sure their voices are heard and amplified in this party,” said Adrita Rahman, who will be participating in the DNC for the first time as an “undecided” delegate.

As for the protests, it remains to be seen how they will be organized and how many people they will attract.

The biggest protest of the week is expected to take place on Monday. At a press conference on Sunday, organizers said they were expecting “many thousands of people.”

They initially estimated that 100,000 protesters could take to the streets, but have since reduced that number to “many, many thousands” who took part in a demonstration in Gaza on Monday and to “tens of thousands” in total by the end of the week.

Ms Harris had earned a certain amount of goodwill among protesters in Gaza because she was among the first members of the government to call for a ceasefire and to express harsher views on Israel and Mr Netanyahu.

But many say the vice president’s honeymoon is over. While they said they appreciated her rhetoric blaming Israel for the humanitarian disaster in Gaza, delegates and protest organizers said they expected Ms. Harris to take a policy position that was actionable.

“I think the people in the DNC need to know that they are pursuing some very unpopular political goals. We are here to tell them,” protester Irene Alikakos said Sunday at the first protest rally of the week, where several hundred people gathered near Trump Tower in Chicago.

This protest will take place immediately before President Biden’s prime-time speech, where he is expected to tout his accomplishments and emphasize the importance of the election.

In addition, the DNC comes in an important week for the US-brokered ceasefire talks – a key initiative in the final months of the Biden administration.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel on Sunday and will travel from there to Cairo, where talks are expected to lead to a decision on the plan.

The Biden White House has described the ceasefire talks as being in their “final” phase, and that diplomatic reality could put Ms Harris and her campaign team in a delicate position.

As a current member of the US administration, it is difficult for her to deviate from President Biden’s position on Gaza under normal circumstances, and it will be even more difficult given the possibility that negotiations are about to end.

Some of those around them said that there would be no significant change of course in either case.

Halie Soifer, Ms Harris’s national security adviser in the Senate, said there was “no difference” between Ms Harris’s views and those of Mr Biden.

“Their policy, which is the policy of the White House, does not change,” said Ms. Soifer, who now heads the Jewish Democratic Council of America.