Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters have gathered in the streets of Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Philadelphia and other cities across the United States, demanding an end to the deadly Israeli air raids on the Gaza Strip.
On Saturday in Los Angeles, protesters held up signs stating that “Free Palestine” had cut off traffic on a major thoroughfare, while in New York, huge crowds marched through Brooklyn chanting “Free and Free Palestine” and ” From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. “
“I am here because I want a Palestinian life to equal an Israeli life and today I am not,” said Emraan Khan, 35, a Manhattan business strategist, waving a Palestinian flag. at a protest in Brooklyn. .
“When you have a state with nuclear weapons and another state of villagers with stones, it’s clear who is to blame,” he added.
Alison Zambrano, a 20-year-old student who had traveled from neighboring Connecticut for the protest, said: “Palestinians have the right to live freely and the children of Gaza should not be killed,” while Mashhour Ahmad, 73 Palestinian, urged US President Joe Biden to “stop supporting the murder.”
“Support the victims, stop the oppression,” Ahmad said, calling the violence committed by the IDF against Palestinians “genocide”.
Protesters were angered by six days of violence that left at least 145 Palestinians dead in Gaza and 10 dead on the Israeli side.
Hours before the marches, Israel had stepped up its assault on Gaza, killing a family of 10 in a refugee camp and razing a building housing the offices of Al Jazeera and the Associated Press.
However, the Israeli and Palestinian leadership showed no signs of backing down, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledging to continue the offensive on Gaza “as long as necessary”, while Hamas leader Ismail Haniya said that “The resistance will not give in”.
The marches in the United States also coincided with Nakba Day, or what Palestinians call the Catastrophe, which commemorates the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the midst of Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948.
In San Francisco, a noisy crowd banged drums and shouted “Palestine will be free”, while similar scenes unfolded in Boston as protesters marched towards the Israeli consulate in New England, blocking traffic .
Images on social media showed protesters unfurling a banner in the colors of the Palestinian flag with the words “Free Palestine” as they stood above the canopy of the building where the consulate is located.
In Washington, DC, thousands of protesters flocked from the Washington Monument to the National Archives, while in the city of Philadelphia, protesters filled Rittenhouse Square to denounce US support for Israel.
A speaker at a rally in the city of Pittsburgh, meanwhile, called on U.S. lawmakers to place restrictions on how Israel can spend Washington’s aid.
Pro-Palestinian supporters protest against Israeli attacks on Gaza amid days of conflict between the two sides, in Brooklyn, New York, United States, May 15, 2021 [Rashid Umar Abbasi/Reuters]
John Hendren of Al Jazeera, Washington, DC, described Saturday’s rallies in support of the Palestinian cause as “unusually important.”
“The protesters wanted the US government to put more pressure on Israel, to end this conflict,” Hendren said.
“There was a real sense of dissatisfaction that the policies of the Biden administration are really not significantly different from the policies of the Trump administration or any other American administration in recent years.”
Amid the violence and rallies, Biden phoned Netanyahu on Saturday and reaffirmed his “strong support for Israel’s right to defend itself against rocket attacks by Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza.”
The US leader also met with Palestinian Authority President Abbas and “expressed his commitment to strengthening the US-Palestinian partnership,” the White House added in a tweet.
Phyllis Bennis, a policy analyst at the US-based Institute for Policy Studies, has expressed concern over Biden’s failure to “pressure Israel to stop this massacre in Gaza.”
“This is a very familiar situation in which it seems the United States takes the lead in Israel when it is ready for a ceasefire. And Netanyahu made it clear that he was not ready for a ceasefire, ”she told Al Jazeera. American policy, she said, was therefore “quite dangerous”.
