In an interview with ABC News on Sunday, the vice president declined to offer details on several issues facing the Biden administration.
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Vice President Kamala Harris during a Women’s History Month reception at the White House this month.
In a carefully worded interview broadcast on ABC News on Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris declined to provide details on how the Biden administration would respond if Israel invaded the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, if Congress continued to refuse to pass border-security legislation and if TikTok’s Chinese parent company refused to sell the service.
Ms. Harris reiterated the administration’s previously stated position that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel should not order an invasion of Rafah, where more than a million people have sought refuge from Israel’s aerial bombardment and ground operations throughout the rest of Gaza.
“We have been clear in multiple conversations and in every way that any major military operation in Rafah would be a huge mistake,” she said. “Let me tell you something. I have studied the maps. There’s nowhere for those folks to go, and we’re looking at about 1.5 million people in Rafah who are there because they were told to go there, most of them.”
But she did not answer when the interviewer, Rachel Scott, asked whether there would be “consequences” if Israel invaded Rafah anyway. Ms. Scott noted that Mr. Netanyahu had shown no inclination to follow the advice of the United States.
“Well, we’re going to take it one step at a time, but we’ve been very clear in terms of our perspective on whether or not that should happen,” Ms. Harris said, adding, after Ms. Scott repeated the question, “I am ruling out nothing.”
Asked about TikTok — which, under legislation that passed the House this month and is awaiting a Senate vote, would be banned in the United States unless the service’s Chinese owner agreed to sell it — she said the administration did not want to ban it but simply had “national security concerns about the owner,” ByteDance.
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Source: nytimes.com
