WASHINGTON — Two weeks out Election dayhas crisis in the Middle East The race for the White House is over, with one candidate struggling to find the right words to navigate its difficult crosscurrents and the other claiming a long-standing conflict can be quickly resolved.
Vice President Kamala Harris has struggled — and not always successfully — to balance her strong condemnation of the Palestinians and the civilian casualties of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon with talk of strong support for Israel.
Former President Donald Trump, for his part, insists that none of this would have happened under his watch and that it could all disappear if he was elected.
Both are bidding for the vote Arab and Muslim American voters and Jewish votersespecially in the very close battleground races of Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Harris drew praise and criticism over the weekend for comments he made about a pro-Palestinian protester in a widely shared video. Some took Harris’ statement that the protester’s concerns were “real” to be a statement of agreement with what he described as “genocide” in Israel’s behavior. This led to sharp condemnation from Michael Oren, Israel’s former ambassador to the US.
But Harris’ campaign said that while the vice president generally agreed on the plight of civilians in Gaza, he would not and would not accuse Israel of genocide.
A day earlier, the dynamic was reversed when Harris told reporters that the “first and most tragic” of the conflict was the Hamas attack on October 7 last year that killed around 1,200 Israelis. This has led to those who believe that the deaths of the more than 41,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza are not given due weight.
Trump, on the other hand, in recent days, has participated in interviews with Saudi Arabia’s Al-Arabiya and Lebanon’s MTV channel, where he promised to bring peace and said that “things will turn out very well” in Lebanon.
In a post on his social media platform on Monday, he predicted that a Harris presidency would make things worse in the Middle East.
“If Kamala gets four more years, the Middle East will spend the next four decades on fire, and your children will go to War, possibly World War III, something that will never happen with President Donald J. Trump in charge,” Trump posted. “For the sake of our Country and for the sake of your children, Vote Trump for PEACE!”
Harris’ position is particularly uncomfortable because, as vice president, he is tied to President Joe Biden’s foreign policy decisions, even as he has tried to strike a more empathetic tone for all parties. But Harris’ aides and allies are also frustrated by what they see as Trump’s largely unpredictable acceptance of some of his foreign policy statements.
“It’s a very thoughtful, very careful school that’s anti-showboating,” said James Zogby, founder and president of the Arab American Institute, which has supported Harris. “That becomes a handicap when he makes all those openings in these latter stages. When the bill arrives they will leave empty-handed, but by then it will be too late.’
The political divisions on the campaign trail could have important implications after Election Day for regional powers, especially Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, who are closely watching the outcome and the possibility of a shift in US foreign policy.
A New AP-NORC survey That Trump and Harris have no clear political advantage over the Middle East situation. 4 in 10 registered voters say Trump would do a better job, and a similar share say that about Harris. Roughly 2 in 10 say neither candidate would do a better job.
There are some signs of weakness within Harris’s party, however. Only about two-thirds of Democratic voters say Harris would be the best candidate to handle the situation in the Middle East. Among Republicans, 8 in 10 say Trump would be better.
In Michigan, home to the nation’s largest concentration of Arab Americans, the Israel-Hamas war has a deep and personal impact on the community. In addition to many of the family’s families in both Lebanon and Gaza, Kamel Ahmad Jawad, a metro Detroit resident, was killed while trying to bring aid to his hometown in southern Lebanon.
The direct impact of the war on the community has sparked outrage and calls for the US to call for an unconditional ceasefire and an arms embargo on Israel.
While both parties have largely supported Israel, much of the anger and blame has been directed at Biden. When Harris entered the race, many Arab American leaders initially felt a renewed sense of optimism, citing his past comments and early campaign outreach efforts.
However, that optimism quickly dissipated as the community perceived that his policies had not sufficiently distanced themselves from those of Biden.
“Telling Arab Americans, ‘Trump will be worse’ – what’s worse than killing your own family members?” said Rima Meroueh, director of the National Network of Arab American Communities. “That’s when people ask the question, ‘Isn’t Trump going to be worse?’ It cannot be worse than what is happening to us now.”
Future Coalition PAC, a super PAC backed by billionaire Elon Musk, is running ads in Michigan’s Arab American communities focusing on Harris’ support for Israel, and featuring a photo of her and her husband, Doug Emhoff, who is Jewish. The same group is sending the opposite message to Jewish voters in Pennsylvania, attacking their support for giving up some weapons to Israel – a move by the Biden administration to pressure the longtime US ally to limit civilian casualties.
Harris spokeswoman Morgan Finkelstein expressed Trump’s approach to the Middle East: “An undefined Trump is too dangerous – he would return us to the chaotic and chaotic vision that made the world less safe and would weaken America.”
___
Cappelletti reported from Lansing, Michigan. Associated Press writer Linley Sanders contributed to this report.
