|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Palo Alto’s mayoral elections are typically light and ceremonial affairs filled with exchanged pleasantries, resolutions of appreciation and a snack buffet where City Council members mingle with community members after the festivities.
It didn’t take long, however, for Greer Stone to realize that this year is different. Minutes after he was chosen to serve as mayor, Stone found himself presiding over a community debate focused on a topic that he had never wanted to wade into: a resolution for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.
Dozens of residents, some of them Stanford University students, urged council members at the Jan. 8 meeting to adopt a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire. They cited the growing death toll in Israel’s war against Hamas, which at that time was estimated to have killed about 23,000 Palestinians (since then, the count has risen to more than 27,000, according to the Associated Press).
“Calling the cease-fire is not radical. It’s the bare minimum,” said Jessica Koehler, one of about 20 speakers who advocated for a resolution.
Many others contended that passing such a resolution would be misguided and divisive. They cited the trauma of Oct. 7, when Hamas orchestrated a terrorist attack on Israel that resulted in more than 1,200 deaths and more than 200 hostages, some of whom have been subsequently released after negotiations. Calling for a cease-fire resolution while Hamas still holds hostages would “only embolden bigots and tear apart our community,” one speaker said. Another urged the council to focus on local issues rather than on a war in the Middle East, which it has no jurisdiction over.
A month later, the debate has only grown louder in Palo Alto and other cities across the United States. Every council meeting in Palo Alto over the past month has featured speakers from both sides, with some characterizing a cease-fire resolution as a moral imperative while others view it as a divisive and futile gesture. In early January, pro-cease-fire protesters took over the state Capitol and disrupted a legislative session with chants of “Cease-fire Now!” Politico reported. President Joe Biden was greeted with the same chant days later, when he was giving a speech in South Carolina, according to The New York Times.
Locally, a group of pro-Palestinian activists disrupted a forum for Congressional candidates that was organized by Embarcadero Media (which oversees this publication), prompting organizers (including this reporter) to end the event just before the candidates were scheduled to give their closing statements. Some of the attendees at the debate returned to City Hall this week to restate their case for or against a cease-fire resolution. Sarit Schube, who represented a group of residents, recalled the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7 and pinned the suffering in Gaza squarely on the group, which has governed Gaza since 2005.
“It’s hard to have a cease-fire with a terrorist group that says they’ll keep breaking it over and over again,” Schube said. “Given all of this, there can be no doubt that Israel must defend herself in this was that was forced upon her.”
Now a month into his mayoral term, Stone has not wavered from his initial position against pursuing a cease-fire resolution. In an interview, Stone said that while the city condemns the killing of innocent civilians on all sides, he believes a cease-fire resolution is the wrong way to go.
“The city is clearly empathetic toward these issues, but the cease-fire resolution, from what we’re seeing in other cities that are doing this, is not bringing peace to anyone,” Stone said. “It’s not bringing closure. It’s only ripping these communities apart.”
The council has not been completely silent when it comes to the war in Gaza. In the days after Oct. 7, then-Mayor Lydia Kou attended a rally at Mitchell Park in support of Israel and read a resolution that condemned Hamas’ attack. She also expressed her grief for casualties on both sides of the war. The murder of innocent people, she said, “is never an appropriate response to any question.”
Kou also noted at the time the rising threats and growing fear that members of both the Jewish and Muslim communities have reported in the aftermath of Oct. 7. The city’s Human Relations Commission has been trying to address these troubling trends by holding a public forum for Arab and Palestinian community members in December and another for Jewish community members in January (The commission is scheduled to discuss efforts to combat antisemitism at its Feb. 8 meeting).
Council member Julie Lythcott-Haims, who serves as liaison to the Human Relations Commission, told the many Jewish speakers who voiced concern about antisemitism during the Jan. 11 meeting that she hopes Palo Alto will find a “way forward in true unity with love.”
“So many people are hurting,” Lythcott-Haims said at the meeting. “I believe in my heart that almost every one of us wants peace.”
For the council, however, “peace” and “cease-fire” are not interchangeable terms. Even as Bay Area cities such as Oakland, Richmond and San Francisco have all adopted resolutions that call for a cease-fire, neither Stone nor his colleagues on the Palo Alto council have publicly called for such a resolution.
Lythcott-Haims and Council member Greg Tanaka, who are both running for Congress, had each expressed personal support for a cease-fire in Gaza during the Jan. 31 Congressional debate. During council meetings, however, neither has advocated for a local resolution to that effect. The council has not scheduled any discussions of a cease-fire resolution. Stone, who as mayor helps set the agenda, told this publication that he does not expect that to change unless two or more colleagues choose to submit a memo calling for such a discussion.
“As mayor, my priority is the health and well-being of our community here in Palo Alto. … We have so many pressing issues to deal with that the council has the authority and ability to accomplish, from affordable housing to youth mental health to climate change mitigation,” Stone said. “I think our residents expect us to work on problems that we are actually able to solve.”
He also argued that, as a matter of process, the council should not get involved in geopolitical conflicts. Doing so, he said, would set a precedent that will “force future councils to weigh in on all foreign conflicts and take time away from actual governing.”
He also cited the tensions that such resolutions have caused in other cities. In San Francisco, Mayor London Breed refused to sign the non-binding resolution that was passed by her city’s Board of Supervisors. She instead issued a statement arguing that since the resolution’s passage, the city has been “angrier, more divided and less safe.” She alluded in her Jan. 19 letter to numerous instances during the meeting when pro-cease-fire protesters intimidated Jewish speakers. In one case, she wrote, protesters surrounded a Jewish city employee in the restroom.
“Sadly, that’s the point,” Breed said in the statement. “Their exercise was never about bringing people together; it was about choosing sides.”
Stone similarly said he is concerned that passing a resolution would worsen local tensions.
“I am concerned about the unintended consequences of only exacerbating the already growing number of antisemitism and Islamophobia incidents in our region,” Stone said. “I won’t do anything that will risk further harm to our city or its residents.”
