Onward to Ceasefire

An update on the movement for Palestinian liberation in the Lehigh Valley

In the months since our last post, conditions in Gaza have deteriorated well beyond our worst nightmares. Nearly thirty thousand people have died. Over one and a half million Palestinians have been displaced from their homes. About half of Gaza’s buildings have been damaged, including essential, life sustaining infrastructure. Hunger is rampant with a full half of the population starving and many more regularly passing whole days without food. The healthcare infrastructure has been enfeebled by bombing and a lack of resources, all while incidents of infectious disease rise sharply. 

During this time, however, the movement for Palestine has also grown in coordination and strength. Here in the Valley, we have marched through the streets of Easton, Bethlehem, and Allentown. We have crowded city council chambers–in the case of some cities, several times–to demand that our elected officials publicly declare the urgent need for a ceasefire. We have gathered in mosques, broken bread in churches, lit the Hanukkah candles and shared a shabbat dinner. We’ve made our urgent demands for a ceasefire heard in Harrisburg, where we shared our vision for a moral budget that helps working people across PA rather than sending billions to the IDF. We have held several separate meetings with our Senators and Congressmembers or their staff. Just days after one such meeting, Representative Susan Wild signed a letter to President Biden urging him to “double [his] efforts at this critical juncture to facilitate a mutual, temporary ceasefire agreement”—an inadequate measure to be sure, but a promising sign of our growing power.  When President Biden came to the Valley to tout the benefits of his economic policies, we were there, demanding an end to this genocide.

Nationally, we’ve seen members of Congress who formerly ignored our pleas for ceasefire begin to echo them in the halls of power. At least 70 members of Congress have officially declared their support for a ceasefire. In Michigan, just this week, over 100,000 citizens chose “uncommitted” over President Joseph Biden in their state’s democratic presidential primary, a protest vote designed to communicate dissatisfaction with Biden’s handling of the ongoing genocide in Palestine. The time may come when we in PA, another critical swing state, get a similar opportunity, with our presidential primary two months away. It is not an exaggeration to say our movement now poses one of the most powerful challenges to Biden’s re-election, if he refuses to change course. Just today (March 3rd), Vice President Kamala Harris called for an immediate ceasefire.

There is much work left to be done, of course. Senator Casey, though he has signed a letter asking the President to open up new avenues for the delivery of humanitarian aid in Gaza, has refused to support a cessation of conflict. Senator Fetterman, the supposed progressive and voice for Pennsylvania’s steel towns, waves Israeli flags at protesters calling for peace. Local state representatives Bob Freeman and Mike Schlossberg, of PA’s 132nd and 136th districts respectively, sponsored PA House Resolution (HR) 245, which urged Congress to provide additional financial and military support to Israel, though neither have since formally addressed the war crimes Israel has committed, in part with US armaments. Indeed, several local officials–including Mayor Sal Panto of Easton–have refused to consider ceasefire resolutions based on the premise that questions of international affairs are outside of municipal and state jurisdiction. Though Representative Wild has now officially called for a temporary ceasefire, she has previously signed on to letters proclaiming, for instance, that “our alliance with Israel is unbreakable” and “our commitment to Israel’s security is ironclad,” which draws into doubt her commitment to the project of building a fair future for Palestinians. 

Yet, we will keep building power, because we must. Reports from a variety of research institutions indicate that many thousands more Gazans will die without an immediate ceasefire, not only from aerial bombardment or catastrophic ground invasions but from hunger and disease.  

So: onward. We will gather this Tuesday, March 5th, at Farrington Square in South Bethlehem at 5:30pm before processing across the Lehigh River to Bethlehem’s city hall, for that evening’s city council meeting.  This event planned by a diverse and growing coalition including: Lehigh SPAC (Student Political Action Committee), Lehigh4Palestine, Pards4Palestine, Muhlenberg MESA, MY Lehigh Valley, Jewish Voice for Peace, Lehigh Valley Artists for Palestine, Lehigh Valley DSA, LEPOCO, and Lehigh Valley Food Not Bombs.

At Bethlehem city council’s last meeting (on 2/20), dozens of speakers pleaded with the city council to pass a ceasefire resolution. Councilperson Bryan Callahan pushed for an immediate vote on a simple, one-sentence resolution, but council decided to take two weeks to articulate a longer, formal document, promising such a resolution would manifest on the agenda for this week’s March 5th meeting. With the deadline for altering that agenda having passed at the end of last week, we now know the city council has broken their promise. This makes the event Tuesday all the more important. 

Opportunities of new kinds are emerging too. One leading member of our movement, Easton Councilperson Taiba Sultana, has announced her campaign for state office, running against forty year incumbent Bob Freeman in the 136th District. Councilperson Sultana was the first elected official in the Valley to introduce a ceasefire resolution and has been a consistent speaker at rallies for ceasefire across the region. To unseat Bob Freeman would be to unseat the sponsor not just of HR 245 (above), but also HR146, which “condemn[ed] the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement,” and HR279, which sought to designate May 14th, 2019 “Israeli Independence Day” while making no reference to the Palestinians displaced as a result. 

Moreover, we are building durable coalitions. In our grief, we reached out to one another, stretching our arms farther than we might have before and embracing new allies, friends, comrades. In this there is tremendous power, if we can transform these relationships–across religious affiliations, racial backgrounds, and disparate neighborhoods–from a momentary alignment to a persistent movement here in the Lehigh Valley. Such a movement might just have the power to finally free Palestinians from colonial occupation and, ultimately, to bring liberation home to us in the Lehigh Valley in the form of affordable housing, universal healthcare, and workplace democracy.