Joe Biden, Kamala Harris urge Mideast peace on Oct. 7 anniversary

President Biden and VP Harris condemn Hamas attack on Israel, push for peace amid US election tensions.

The U.S. President Joe Biden and presidential candidate Kamala Harris condemned Hamas’s attack on Israel a year ago on Monday (October 7, 2024) while pushing for peace in the Middle East — treading a tightrope on a conflict that could impact next month’s US presidential election.

From candle-lighting to tree-planting, the President and the Vice President will take part in ceremonies to mark the anniversary of the October 7 attacks on key American ally Israel.

Republican Donald Trump, Ms. Harris’s rival in a tooth-and-nail election, was also due to take part in events to mark the anniversary of the surprise attacks by Hamas, in which 1,205 people were killed, most of them civilians, and 251 taken hostage.

But with the Middle East on the verge of all-out war and protests planned at home, the commemorations also underscore Biden and Harris’s apparent powerlessness to influence Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct of the war.

“Far too many civilians have suffered far too much during this year of conflict,” Mr. Biden said in a statement.

MR. Biden lashed out at the “unspeakable brutality” of the attacks and said he and Ms. Harris were “fully committed” to the security of Israel against Iran and its regional allies Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

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.”