Kamala Harris says Israel assault on Rafah ‘would be a huge mistake’

Senior US Democrats on Sunday increased pressure on Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to abandon a planned offensive into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians are sheltering.

Two days after a similar call by US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, was rejected by the Israeli leader, vice-president Kamala Harris said that the Joe Biden White House was “ruling out nothing” in terms of consequences if Netanyahu moves ahead with the assault.

Harris said that Washington had been “very clear in terms of our perspective on whether or not that should happen”.

“Any major military operation in Rafah would be a huge mistake,” Harris said on ABC’s This Week. “I have studied the maps – there’s nowhere for those folks to go. And we’re looking at about a million and a half people in Rafah who are there because they were told to go there.”

Harris declined to say if she, like Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, the most senior politician of the Jewish faith in the US, believed that Netanyahu is an obstacle to peace. But she said: “We’ve been very clear that far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.

“We have been very clear that Israel and the Israeli people and Palestinians are entitled to an equal amount of security and dignity.”

Her remarks came as political figure from progressive elements of the Democratic political established added their voices to the growing opposition to the humanitarian costs of Israel’s five-month military campaign on the Palestinian territory.

That air and ground campaign began after Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, killing more than 1,100 and taking hostages. The offensive has killed more than 30,000 people and pushed Gaza to the brink of famine.

On Friday,