In a side room backstage at a campaign rally on Friday in Flint, Michigan, Arab-American advocates asked Vice President Kamala Harris to break with President Joe Biden’s Israel policy and push harder for an end to the war in Gaza.

The conversation, which was scheduled to last 10 minutes, ended up lasting 20 minutes, according to Wa’el Alzayat, the CEO of Emgage Action, a group focused on boosting the Muslim American vote. Harris made no promises, he said, but told them “that she also wants the war to end and that she will do everything she can to work toward that end.”

“She committed to working with our community, engaging our community, and (said) she fully understands what we’re saying. She is hopeful that if she wins, she will be able to make all of this happen once she becomes president,” Alzayat told CNN.

The Emgage Action leader said he and other Arab-American leaders had been contacted and invited to the room in the past 48 hours. Their message to Harris was simple, he said. She had to “show the distance between the way she would govern on this issue and the current government policy, with which we do not agree.”

Further context: The meeting came amid growing frustration over Harris’ response to Israel’s recent escalations in Lebanon and concerns that her campaign was unwilling to heed critical voices. Harris is hamstrung in part because of her position: Vice presidents do not determine U.S. foreign policy.

But as the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas has expanded into a multi-front conflict involving Iran, which fired missiles at Israel this week, and Iranian-backed groups in Lebanon and Yemen, prominent Arab-American groups have urged more.

Read more about Arab-American lawyers meeting with Harris.