Democrats avoid Gaza debate at Chicago convention; crew evacuated from Houthi-stricken oil tanker in Red Sea

The crew of a ship that suffered several attacks in the Red Sea has been evacuated with naval support.

Lebanon’s hopes of boosting a moribund economy with tourism revenue have been thwarted after an Israeli airstrike on the capital Beirut and the threat of all-out war triggered a series of travel bans and sent holidaymakers packing.

Democrats avoid Gaza debate in convention push to unify behind Harris

Kamala Harris’ campaign strategy for confronting the politically charged issue of the war in Gaza at the Democratic National Convention has been mostly to avoid confronting it at all.

Wary of alienating supporters in key swing states — including progressives and pro-Palestinian voters in Michigan and Minnesota, and Jewish voters in Pennsylvania — Democrats on the convention’s main stage have kept mention of the war to a minimum.

That’s despite rising pressure from pro-Palestinian voters who want to see Harris push harder for a ceasefire and to let a Palestinian-American address the crowd on Thursday on its final night. So far, the only extended discussion of the war came when the parents of an American-Israeli hostage seized by Hamas spoke to the convention but stuck to calls for their son and the others who were taken to be freed.

The balancing act reflects a broader campaign strategy by Harris, whose team is focused on spurring enthusiasm for her candidacy for now and leaving policy positions for later. That’s included maintaining support for Israel in the Gaza war — the most divisive foreign-policy issue of the moment — while declining to contradict speculation that she might, if elected, put more pressure on Israeli leaders to come to a ceasefire than President Joe Biden has.

“This idea that she’s going to get out there and somehow renounce one side or the other and make a hard policy decision — no,” said Joel Rubin, a former deputy assistant secretary of State and a Democratic political strategist. “The Democratic political convention is about mobilising votes for the nominee, not subtracting them.”

Earlier: Harris doesn’t support halting arms flow to Israel, says aide 

Before Democrats nominated Harris, the 2024 election looked to be the rare instance in which foreign policy might play a key role. The party was bracing for pro-Palestinian protests in Chicago, scenes they feared would turn off swing state voters and usher in a second term for former president Donald Trump.

Criticism of Biden’s handling of the war has garnered so much attention that a group from the Uncommitted Movement, representing more than 730,000 voters who selected or wrote in “uncommitted” during the presidential primaries, sent 30 delegates — of about 4,700 total — to the convention in Chicago.

Trump and Republicans were eager to play up the internal divisions, accusing Harris of anti-Semitism for passing over Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro as her vice-presidential pick, a notion Shapiro has rejected. The GOP dedicated one of its convention’s four nights in Milwaukee to national-security themes and portraying the Biden-Harris administration as undermining US leadership in the world.

But Harris’ campaign has declined to join that fight, and foreign policy has barely featured at all in the first three nights of the DNC. Harris’ team has engaged the Uncommitted Movement behind the scenes, hoping that the outreach will appeal to pro-Palestinian voters while publicly pledging continued support for Israel.

“We will continue to and have unwaveringly stood with Israel,” campaign adviser Brian Nelson told a Bloomberg News roundtable. “She will continue to talk about those things, a lot of those communications will come in the form of her day job, the thing that she is doing every day. So I’m sure it will be a topic she’ll have the opportunity to talk about over the course of the campaign.”

That strategy threatened to backfire on the final day of the convention, with prominent Democrats and their supporters boosting calls for a Palestinian-American speaker on the convention’s main stage in the hours before Harris addressed the crowd in her acceptance speech.

They made the demand after the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was taken hostage in the 7 October attack by Hamas, spoke on Wednesday night and called for peace in the region. His father, Jon Polin, said there was a “surplus of agony on all sides of the tragic conflict in the Middle East”.

In a social media post after Goldberg-Polin’s parents spoke, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the “humanity of the 40,000 Palestinians killed under Israeli bombardment” must be a focus “just as we must honour the humanity of hostages”.

In her speech to the convention on Monday, the progressive legislator said Harris “is working tirelessly to ensure a ceasefire in Gaza and bringing the hostages home”.

Crew evacuated from Houthi-stricken oil tanker in Red Sea

The crew of a ship that suffered several attacks in the Red Sea has been evacuated with naval support.

Delta Tankers, which operates the Sounion, said on Thursday that plans were in place to move the vessel to a safer destination where checks and repairs could be done. The ship came under attack on Wednesday and was then adrift after its engine lost power.

Vessels have been regularly attacked in the Red Sea since Yemen’s Houthi militants began targeting merchant ships late last year in protest at Israel’s activities in Gaza. Wednesday’s incident was one of the most serious since the Houthis sank a vessel with a sea drone for the first time in June.

The ship was carrying 150,000 tonnes of crude oil, the European Union’s naval force in the region said in a post on X. The vessel represented a navigational and environmental hazard, it added.

Sounion loaded its cargo in Iraq earlier this month, according to vessel-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.

The ship was no longer drifting and was at anchor in the Red Sea, the Associated Press reported, citing the European Union’s military operation in the region. It said a French destroyer had rescued 29 mariners from the tanker.

Lebanon’s goal of being top tourist destination fades after Israeli airstrike

Lebanon’s hopes of boosting a moribund economy with tourism revenue have been thwarted after an Israeli airstrike on the capital Beirut and the threat of all-out war triggered a series of travel bans and sent holidaymakers packing.

Summer-season income from visitors — mostly from among Lebanon’s large diaspora — had been expected to surpass the $5-billion to $7-billion pumped in last year, according to Minister of Economy and Trade Amin Salam. But, he said in an interview, that all changed after the strike late last month, which has raised fears of a wider conflict on Lebanese soil between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group.

The rocket attack in Beirut’s southern suburbs killed a senior commander of Hezbollah, which has been trading fire with the Jewish state since the Israel-Hamas war began in October. Israel said the commander, Fuad Shukr, was responsible for a strike on the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights that killed 12 youngsters playing soccer.

The conflict had already cost Lebanon more than $10-billion, Salam said, basing his estimate on lost revenue and damage to infrastructure.

“We had dreamed” the growth in spending by tourists and returning Lebanese would continue, he said in his Beirut office. But, “everyone who had booked cancelled, and everyone who was here left. That sector froze. Hotels and stores are empty.”

Preventing the skirmishes from escalating even further has been at the heart of international diplomatic efforts to ease tension across the Middle East.

International governments issued travel warnings at around the time of Israel’s strike and airlines suspended flights. The US even offered citizens loans to buy tickets out, prices for which have surged. Tourist spending in Lebanon was a significant boost to a Mediterranean economy that’s been in meltdown over the past five years because of a banking and debt crisis.

“This money is what kept the country alive,” said Salam said.

Hezbollah, backed by Iran and designated a terrorist organisation by the US, says it will continue hostilities with Israel until the country agrees a ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza. The cross-border fire with Israel has destroyed hundreds of Lebanese homes and businesses and swaths of agricultural land, which along with tourism is the country’s main source of revenue.

More than 500 people have been killed in Lebanon by Israeli strikes since October, most of them Hezbollah fighters. In Israel, roughly 30 soldiers and 18 civilians have been killed by Hezbollah attacks.

Lebanon was plunged into crisis after dollar inflows from the diaspora began dwindling around 2019, and confidence in the country’s ability to finance its debt vanished. Mass protests erupted amid soaring inflation and rampant government corruption. The situation only worsened after an explosion at Beirut’s port in 2020 that killed about 220 people.

Lebanon defaulted on more than $31-billion of bonds and remains locked out of financial markets. Restructuring talks have yet to get under way.

In the past year, the central bank printing less money and the dollarisation of the economy — something Salam describes as his most important achievement, and which local businesses wanted — have brought relief. Inflation has slowed to 42% from almost 270% in April 2023.

Around then, Salam asked all supermarkets and other retailers to price items in dollars. Before the decision, shops used to empty their cash registry three times a day as they constantly repriced items up in the local pound, he said.

Still, the economy is nowhere near being fixed. Authorities can’t agree on how to restructure banks and carry out other reforms that will be needed to get a loan from the International Monetary Fund and boost growth. DM

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