President Joe Biden and US election rivals Kamala Harris and Donald Trump marked the first anniversary on Monday of Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel, as the Middle Eastern conflict threatens to weigh on November’s presidential vote.
In a solemn Jewish ceremony of mourning at the White House, Biden lit a candle while a rabbi chanted a prayer for the victims, with the president calling for peace even as the region teeters on the edge of all-out war.
Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Harris separately planted a memorial tree at her Washington residence, while Republican former president Trump met Jewish leaders at a sacred gravesite in New York.
“Far too many civilians have suffered far too much during this year of conflict,” Biden, who has backed key ally Israel with billions of dollars in arms, said in a statement.
The president lashed out at the “unspeakable brutality” of the attacks and said he and Harris were “fully committed” to Israel’s security against Iran and its regional allies — Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Huthis in Yemen.
But he also described October 7 as a “dark day for the Palestinian people” and said he and Harris “will not stop working to achieve a ceasefire deal in Gaza.”
– ‘Not giving up’ –
As Israel pounds Lebanon to tackle the Hezbollah militia, both Biden and Harris said in separate statements that a “diplomatic solution” was the “only path” to a wider peace.
Protesters against the Gaza war could be heard in the background as Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff, the first Jewish spouse of a US president or vice president, planted a pomegranate tree in what she said was a symbol of “hope and righteousness.”
Speaking afterward, Harris told reporters that a Gaza ceasefire deal was the best hope to “bring any type of stability to the region.”
“We’re not giving up. We’re doing everything we can possibly do to get the ceasefire hostage deal done,” Harris said.
Trump, Harris’s rival in the tooth-and-nail election, did not make any public remarks as he paid his respects at the final resting place of a famous rabbi in New York.
But he blasted Biden and Harris over their handling of the Middle East in an interview earlier, accusing the incumbent of having the “worst foreign policy of anybody in history probably.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “not listening at all” to Biden, said Trump — with the property tycoon lamenting that war-torn Gaza could one day be “better than Monaco”.
– ‘End the bloodshed’ –
Trump’s campaign earlier said in a statement: “It’s imperative that President Trump is re-elected so he can end the bloodshed.”
The anniversary has underlined Biden and Harris’s apparent powerlessness to influence Netanayhu’s conduct over the past year, and especially now as the Middle East is on the verge of full-scale war.
Israel is expected to retaliate imminently for a massive Iranian missile attack, but Biden has urged Israel not to attack Iran’s oil facilities, fearing it could push up oil prices and hit the US economy with less than a month until the election.
The Gaza war has also created a political minefield for Harris and Biden, with Arab and Muslim voters in key swing states and left-wing Democrats strongly opposed to the conflict.
A small protest against Israel’s war in Gaza and Biden’s support for Israel took place at New York’s Columbia University while hundreds of people rallied in the Wall Street financial district.
Dozens of pro-Palestinian Columbia students walked out of classes and marched around the central lawn, wearing keffiyehs and holding Palestinian flags. Some pro-Israel supporters demonstrated at the same time. .
The Hamas attacks on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on the latest official Israeli figures.
According to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, 41,909 people, the majority civilians, have been killed since the start of the war. The figures have been deemed to be reliable by the United Nations.
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