In popular parlance, the US President Joe Biden is already known as ‘Genocide Biden’ – a title that unmistakably highlights the role Biden has been playing, since October 2023, in facilitating Israel’s brutal war on Gaza. With Biden now all set to not contest in the upcoming presidential elections in the US in November this year, the question of whether the new president – Kamala Harris vs. Donald Trump – bring any change to the US policy towards Israel? Given Trump’s past as an extremely pro-Israel president, the real question is whether Kamala Harris, Biden’s replacement for the Democrats, will bring any change. Harris’ past statements show a somewhat different position than Biden’s, but given the depth of the US-Israel ties at the state level, a major shift is unlikely to happen.

The Harris Factor

In December 2023, when Harris addressed Arab leaders in Dubai, she expressed concerns about the safety of civilians being killed in Gaza by the Israeli military forces. She said, “The United States is unequivocal: International humanitarian law must be respected. Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering and the images and videos coming from Gaza are devastating.” In retrospect, she sounded radically different from Netanyahu’s recent claim – which he made in his speech to the US Congress – that hardly any civilians had been killed in Gaza since the start of the war. Regardless of absurd Israeli claims, she also reaffirmed the US position,........

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