Kamala Harris Hasn’t Broken From Joe Biden On Gaza. But Skeptics Of The War Watch Her Rise With Hope.

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday made her first major statement on the war in Gaza since she became the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee — affirming that she wants to see conditions improve for Palestinians, while still backing the current U.S. approach of simultaneously arming Israel and seeking a cease-fire.

Harris notably offered the U.S. administration’s official readout of discussions that she and President Joe Biden held earlier in the day with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“To everyone who has been calling for a cease-fire and to everyone who yearns for peace: I see you and I hear you,” she said, detailing a proposed truce that the U.S. has spent months urging Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas to embrace. Harris combined common administration talking points — support for Israel’s right to defend itself and concern for the human toll of its military campaign in Gaza — with the kind of detail she has often used in describing the conflict’s effects.

Citing “images of dead children and desperate hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time,” Harris said she told Netanyahu “to get this deal done” to help Palestinians and free Israeli hostages whom Hamas captured in the Oct. 7 attack that sparked the current fighting.

Biden rarely uses such vivid language in addressing Palestinian distress. Still, rhetoric is for now the chief difference between Harris and him when it comes to the war. As she develops her presidential campaign, managing continuity and contrast with the president on Gaza is likely to remain a top concern for Harris and her team.

Of the two voter groups she needs to woo for a victory in November —