VP’s office says ‘no daylight’ between Harris and Biden on Israel-Hamas

A spokesperson for Vice President Harris on Thursday pushed back on a report that Harris had urged President Biden to show more public concern for the plight of civilians in Gaza amid Israel’s fight with Hamas.

Politico reported Harris has been telling colleagues in the White House, including Biden, that the administration should be more outwardly sensitive to the humanitarian situation unfolding in Gaza, where thousands of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli strikes in recent weeks. The report cited three people familiar with Harris’s comments.

“As I told Politico a week ago, ‘there is no daylight between the President and Vice President nor has there been,’ and media should be cautious and discerning about including anonymous ‘sources’ who are not privy to their private conversations,” Kirsten Allen, Harris’s press secretary, wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

One source told Politico that Harris believes the United States should be tougher on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and should be more forceful about pushing for a two-state solution.

The report came nearly two weeks after Harris visited Dubai for a climate conference and met with Arab officials in the region to discuss the Israel-Hamas war.

“Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering and the images and videos coming from Gaza are devastating,” Harris said during her visit.

Biden has recently become more outspoken in warning Israel that it risks losing public support for its fight against Hamas, the terrorist group that controls Gaza, because of its “indiscriminate bombings” that have killed Palestinian civilians.

The White House has been steadfast in its support of Israel in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel that killed roughly 1,200 people and have supplied the Israelis with additional resources. But Biden and other aides have also insisted it’s critical that Israel abide by the laws of war and minimize civilian casualties.