Harris is the greatest hope at stopping the Gaza conflict

Vice President Kamala Harris’s sudden ascension to the top of the Democratic presidential ticket has not only transformed the 2024 election. It has also provided the biggest opportunity in months to get Democrats to change their cruel and discredited approach to the war in Gaza.

In light of such an unprecedented moment, with the war still raging and the prospects of regional escalation in the Middle East as high as they’ve ever been, the need for a comprehensive reset on the Democratic Party’s policy toward the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and freedom is paramount. It is clear what anyone who cares about this issue must demand right now: that Harris tells the American public and the world that Israel can no longer occupy Palestinian land and impose apartheid on millions while enjoying US support and protection from accountability. But we must be equally clear that Harris will not do any of these things without sustained, relentless political pressure from the movement for Palestine.

The last 10 months of destruction and carnage, in which the Israelis have killed more than 40,000 civilians and displaced 2 million more, have been a humanitarian catastrophe. They have also been a political disaster for the Democrats. Poll after poll shows that the demand for a ceasefire is mainstream, with voters  to cast a ballot for a Democrat who expresses clear support for one than a Democrat who mirrors the Republican on the issue. More than  who expressed support for the Biden-Harris ticket say that military assistance to Israel should be decreased. The campaign for the “” ballot option in states like Michigan, New Jersey, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Washington enabled Democratic voters in the hundreds of thousands, alongside professional organizers and activists, to express opposition to Biden’s  support of Israel’s occupation and apartheid system.

The Biden administration’s approach to Palestine, from his first day in office to the beginning of this war, has sadly been quite similar to that of Trump’s. Taken in by the ridiculous belief that the Palestinians and their national aspirations could be indefinitely brushed to the side, Biden chose to affirm the bad logic of Trump’s Abraham Accords and pursued a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Instead of restoring policy that adhered to international standards, Biden instead backed Trump’s decision to recognize all of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights as Israeli territory. As of this writing, Biden still has  the Trump administration’s policy of labeling products from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank as “made in Israel.” While the State Department routinely offered rhetorical support for a two-state solution, the president has used his veto power at the UN to  Palestinian bids for representation. These are conservative positions that have been upheld by a Democratic president, and it is imperative that whoever succeeds Biden takes up a different approach.