Kamala Harris' Palestine shift is all for show, don't fall for it

Kamala Harris’s reported outreach to pro-Palestinian activists should not be mistaken for moral courage. It is not a late conversion born of the ruins of Gaza, nor an act of repentance for the Biden administration’s complicity in Israel’s genocidal war. It is, above all, an act of political survival.

Harris is looking at the Democratic Party’s changing base, the electoral advances of progressives, the collapse of unconditional support for Israel among younger voters, and the deep anger that Gaza produced across campuses and Arab American communities. She is doing what she has often done best: reading the room.

According to Axios, Harris has privately called New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, met with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and reached out to pro-Palestinian activists, including figures linked to the Uncommitted Movement. Axios also reported that she met Abbas Alawieh, a co-founder of the movement now running for the Michigan state Senate, and spoke with James Zogby, a long-time Democratic National Committee member and advocate for Palestinian rights.

This is not happening in a vacuum. The Uncommitted Movement did not emerge because activists were looking for a polite listening session with the vice-president. It emerged because the Biden-Harris administration armed, funded, defended and diplomatically shielded Israel while Gaza was being destroyed. During the 2024 campaign, Harris refused to endorse an arms embargo and continued to frame Israel’s military assault through the language of “security”, even while occasionally sounding more empathetic than Biden towards Palestinian civilians.

Her record is not ambiguous. As a senator, Harris cultivated ties with AIPAC and other pro-Israel networks. She backed the traditional bipartisan consensus that treats Israel as a strategic ally whose military superiority must be maintained. She may criticise Israel’s conduct, but she has not broken with the architecture of US support.

Even her own retrospective account is revealing. In her book 107 Days, Harris says Biden’s remarks on Palestinian suffering sounded “inadequate and forced”, and she describes tensions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But she also complains about pro-Palestinian protesters disrupting her campaign and frames the election as a binary choice in which dissent risked helping Donald Trump.

The problem, however, is that for many voters, Gaza was not a messaging failure. It was a moral and political break. Harris’ new posture is a sign that the ground is moving under the Democratic Party. Progressive, pro-Palestinian candidates are no longer symbolic protest figures. They are winning.

Mamdani’s rise in New York has been followed by victories for candidates aligned with the left and openly critical of Israel. Democratic Socialist candidates such as Darializa Avila Chevalier, Claire Valdez and Brad Lander unseated incumbents while advancing staunchly pro-Palestinian positions.

The polling tells the same story. Gallup found in 2026 that Democrats view the Palestinians more favourably than Israel, with 48% holding a favourable view of the Palestinians compared with 34% for Israel. Gallup also found that overall American sympathy for Israelis has fallen below half, while sympathy for Palestinians has reached a record high.

Pew found in 2026 that 60% of US adults now hold an unfavourable view of Israel, up from 53% the previous year, and that majorities of adults under 50 in both parties now rate Israel negatively.

The generational shift is central. Younger Americans, and especially younger Democratic voters, are no longer accepting the old script in which Israel is presented as a vulnerable democracy and Palestinians appear only as humanitarian victims, security threats, or demographic complications. The Gaza war tore through that framing. Students saw mass death, starvation, forced displacement, bombed universities, destroyed hospitals, and US officials repeating Israeli talking points. The campus protests were not a side episode. They were the most visible domestic expression of a broader rupture.

This is why Harris is now listening. She is responding to the shift, not leading it. Her outreach is also an admission, however indirect, that the Democratic establishment misread Gaza. Party leaders treated outrage over Palestine as a manageable irritant, something to be contained through procedural discipline, convention choreography, and warnings about Trump. They underestimated how deeply Gaza had transformed political consciousness among young voters, Muslim and Arab American communities, Black and brown organisers, and parts of the progressive Jewish left.

They also underestimated how hollow appeals to “democracy” sounded while the administration backed a war many of its own voters regarded as a genocide.

But no one should confuse Harris’ repositioning with a future rupture in US policy. If she is ever elected president, the safest assumption is continuity. She may change the tone. She may avoid Biden’s clumsy emotional identification with Zionism. She may refrain from the public bromance that Trump performs with Israeli leaders. She may issue sharper statements on settler violence, humanitarian aid, or West Bank annexation. She may scold Netanyahu, especially if he remains useful as a symbol of Israeli extremism. But the core relationship will almost certainly remain intact.

That core is structural. Israel is not just a lobby issue or an electoral issue. It is integrated into US power projection in the Middle East. The Israeli state and military function as part of a wider American security order that includes arms transfers, intelligence sharing, counterinsurgency cooperation, missile defence, surveillance technologies, and regional pacification. No Harris presidency is likely to dismantle that. At most, she would try to manage the contradictions more elegantly.

This is the difference between rhetoric and power. Harris can bark about settlements while maintaining the weapons pipeline. She can speak of Palestinian dignity while preserving Israel’s qualitative military edge. She can distance herself from Biden’s tone while keeping his strategic commitments. She can invite activists into closed-door meetings while refusing the one demand that would mark a real break: ending US military support for Israel’s war machine.

That does not mean her outreach is meaningless. It means the pressure is working, but not enough. The pro-Palestinian movement has forced the Democratic elite to pay attention. It has made Palestine a primary issue, not just a foreign policy concern. It has helped shift polling, punished incumbents, elevated new candidates, and made it impossible for ambitious Democrats to treat Palestinian life as politically disposable.

Harris’ move should be read in that light. It is cynical. It is opportunistic. It comes from a politician who remained complicit when it mattered most. But it is also evidence of changing times. The Democratic Party’s old Israel consensus is cracking from below, pushed by young voters, campus organisers, Arab and Muslim communities, socialists, anti-war Jews, and progressives who no longer accept the fiction that US support for Israel is cost-free.

Harris wants to inherit the anger without paying the political price of confronting its cause. That is the manoeuvre. The task for pro-Palestinian organisers is to make sure she cannot.

Hossam el-Hamalawy is an Egyptian scholar-activist in Germany, focusing on the military, policing, and labour.

Follow Hossam on X: @3arabawy

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab.