Pro-Palestinian activists face complicated new decisions as Democrats gather to support a surging Kamala Harris

(CNN) — Outside the heavily guarded perimeter of the Democratic convention this week, pro-Palestinian groups are preparing for tens of thousands to march in opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza. On the inside, expectations are murkier – as activists push the Democratic National Committee and Vice President Kamala Harris to take a harder line with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

The Uncommitted National Movement, which emerged during the Democratic presidential primary to marshal protest votes against the Biden administration’s handling of the conflict, is demanding the party offer a primetime speaking slot to a pediatrician recently returned from Gaza, as well as a series of policy concessions headlined by an arms embargo against Israel.

The mixture of giddy enthusiasm for Harris’ new campaign, which has captivated suddenly optimistic Democrats, and anger among the party’s pro-Palestinian factions over President Joe Biden’s continued support for the Israeli bombardment of Gaza has created an odd, frenetic buzz around the quadrennial gathering. Though little has changed on the ground in Gaza and, increasingly, the West Bank, over the past few weeks, some of the leading progressive groups, anti-war organizers, and Arab- and Palestinian-American activists who were poised to lead the charge in Chicago are facing a starkly different reality from a month ago, when Biden still topped the ticket.

“When Biden stepped aside, many of the people in the Uncommitted camp, anti-war voters breathed a sigh of relief,” said Waleed Shahid, a progressive strategist and co-founder of the Uncommitted National Movement. “Then there were some signs of movement. One was Vice President Harris not attending Netanyahu’s speech. Vice President Harris giving a statement that she won’t be ‘silent’ about the killing of civilians. And just, from her, a little bit more empathy and centering of the horrific death toll of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.”

Protests over Israel’s war on Hamas following the group’s October 7 attacks have led to large-scale demonstrations around the country calling for an immediate ceasefire. Some of those demonstrations have been blatantly antisemitic, with some protesters voicing support for Hamas, drawing condemnation from Biden and Harris.

Since Harris became the party’s standard-bearer, the mood has somewhat changed. Protesters have briefly disrupted a couple of her speeches, and campus demonstrations are poised to resume when students return to schools in the coming weeks, but the movement’s leaders have mostly shifted to quieter means of lobbying for changes in US policy.

Harris spoke briefly with Layla Elabed and Abbas Alawieh, two co-founders of Uncommitted, before a speech in Detroit on August 7, with the vice president thanking them for their work, according to the activists. A source familiar with the meeting said she had not expressed openness to the group’s calls for an arms embargo on Israel, but Harris’s national security adviser, Phil Gordon, said after the encounter that. Harris’s national security adviser, Phil Gordon, knocked down talk of an embargo a day later, but said the vice president would “continue to work to protect civilians in Gaza and to uphold international humanitarian law.”

Addressing Uncommitted supporters after the exchange with Harris, Elabed offered more qualified optimism.

“I understand that when (Harris) agreed to meet with me, she wasn’t agreeing to an arms embargo,” Elabed said. “She was agreeing to discuss an arms embargo and discuss a policy that will save lives now and hopefully get us to the point where we can put our support behind Vice President Harris.”

In the weeks before, Uncommitted delivered a series of requests to the DNC as part of a bid to center the Gaza issue during the convention. Few were likely ever to be accepted – like a commitment in the party platform to not send unrestricted weapons to Israel, and floor credentials and office space for Uncommitted staff – but the group has pressed hardest for a prominent speaking slot for Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric physician who has volunteered in Gaza and described the devastation there in harrowing detail.

So far, though, there is no indication that Haj-Hassan will be allowed onstage. One source in the Uncommitted camp closely involved in conversations with the party said the DNC received their asks, but has not meaningfully engaged since then. As of Friday, there are not believed to be any Palestinian-American speakers on the schedule, and it remains unclear who will occupy some of the most sought-after speaking slots and what they’ll say – or not say – about the most divisive matter in Democratic politics.

The DNC did not respond to a request for comment, but a source involved in convention planning told CNN there has been some uncertainty on the DNC’s end over how to address asks they consider unworkable given the circumstances. Still, the source said, there is a sense of good-faith shared between the parties.

Whether that lasts is an open question.

“At the convention – along with my fellow uncommitted delegates – I will advocate for VP Harris to support a permanent ceasefire and an arms embargo,” June Rose, an uncommitted delegate from Rhode Island who grew up as an Orthodox Jew, said in a social media post on Friday. “We will make our voices heard in Chicago.”

“It’s part of the party, it’s part of their base, and it would be more than a just a goodwill gesture” to allow pro-Palestinian speakers, said Abed Ayoub, national executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. “Politically, it would makes sense for them to do it. But it’s not surprising if they’re not. I mean, this is consistent with the party leadership. They haven’t been the best on this issue.”

Ayoub, who praised Harris for ramping up engagement with the activist community and for her selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, had been involved in the vice presidential vetting process for Dr. Jill Stein, once again the Green Party’s presidential candidate. He spoke with CNN in his capacity as an ADC leader, but acknowledged submitting paperwork requested by Stein’s camp.  (Stein chose Rudolph “Butch” T. Ware III, a historian of Africa and Islam, who made anti-Israel comments on his social media on the day of Hamas’ attack on Israel, for the role.)

The more pressing question for Harris’ campaign and party leadership, as the contest enters its final sprint, is whether the vice president plans to propose or offer any substantial changes – or tweaks – to US policy in the region. Harris allies have said her hands are tied given her role in Biden’s administration.

Activists see it differently, arguing she has a direct line to the president and, with it, more sway than most.

“The message that’s being conveyed to this part of the Democratic Party is that there is no alternatives to sending American bombs to Netanyahu,” Shahid said. “That’s what people are hearing. They’re not (accepting), ‘Oh, it’s the vice president. She doesn’t agree.’ That’s not good enough.”

Lexis Zeidan, a Palestinian-American Christian co-chair of Uncommitted and director of the Not Another Bomb campaign, also said the status quo messaging from the campaign, though an improvement from a few weeks ago when Biden was still running, needed more substance if it is going to win back votes in November.

“The community is not a monolith. Some are feeling very skeptical, given the nature of how the Democratic Party has acted the past 10 months,” Zeidan told CNN. “Some people really are waiting to hear something – the right thing – so they can support and mobilize behind her.”

The desire to see a meaningful shift, Zeidan added, was not about personal feelings, but bare-knuckle politics.

“I can’t tell my community that I  ‘feel’ or ‘think’ Vice President Harris is more sympathetic to Palestinians, so we should vote for her. That’s not going to work. People want to vote for something,” she said. “They want to see an end to the madness. They want to vote for someone who is going to end that.”

The Uncommitted National Movement, which began as an operation to coalesce protest votes in Michigan against Biden’s policy in Israel and Gaza, has been the most successful among the anti-war, pro-Palestinian groups in engaging with Harris’ team and convention organizers. The back-and-forth between them echoes the mutually beneficial posturing, headlined by the creation of joint policy “task forces,” by Biden’s 2020 campaign and progressive allies of independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders after that year’s primary.

But the Harris campaign is also working outside familiar progressive circles, engaging with elected officials and leaders from Arab American and Jewish communities in Michigan, according to sources familiar with the meetings.

Those conversations, which were held on Thursday in the Detroit metro area and were in the works for several weeks, according to one of the sources, are the most recent signal that the campaign appreciates the electoral stakes of winning over progressives and young voters as well as Muslim and Arab American communities, which represent important voting blocs in the battleground state of Michigan.

Biden campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez and Nasrina Bargzie, a former White House official leading the Harris campaign’s outreach to Arab American and Muslim communities, participated in meetings with Arab American elected officials and leaders on Thursday, according to two participants.

Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab American News, met with the campaign officials in a separate meeting, telling CNN they had a “frank and open discussion.”

Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab American News, met with the campaign officials in a separate meeting, telling CNN they had a “frank and open discussion.”

“I delivered a message of great concerns about what is happening in the Middle East,” said Siblani, who met with Chávez Rodríguez earlier this year. The Biden-Harris administration, he told the campaign leaders, “are doing absolutely nothing to stop the genocide as they continue supplying Netanyahu’s killing machine with US made bombs to kill more people.”

Chávez Rodríguez and Ilan Goldenberg, another former White House official who is now leading the campaign’s outreach to the Jewish American community, also met with leaders from the Jewish community while in Michigan.

“Julie is traveling to Michigan as part of our campaign’s ongoing outreach to communities across the country,” said Harris campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa.

Sophie Ellman-Golan of Jews For Racial & Economic Justice, a New York-based grassroots group, told CNN that the unexpected switch of Harris for Biden should not be underestimated – that “space opened up” after the change and movement leaders felt “something other than despair” for the first time in recent memory.

“We’re not trying to fight the Democratic party,” Ellman-Golan said. “Elections are about voting for the conditions we want to organize under. We’re actively trying to shape those conditions and the fight around the DNC is about actively trying to shape those conditions.”

CLARIFICATION: This story has been updated to more accurately characterize Harris’ interaction with Uncommitted activists earlier this month.

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