Demonstrations in Tempe and Tucson over the weekend highlighted the rising death toll in the Palestinian territory of Gaza, where Israeli airstrikes have killed thousands over the last two weeks.
In an Oval Office address last week, President Joe Biden cited Arizona as a weapons manufacturing site when asking Congress to approve a $105 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine and Israel, including more than $14 billion in military support for Israel. Raytheon, the defense contractor that makes the Patriot missiles cited by Biden, has a manufacturing facility in Tucson.
Several dozen Tucsonans gathered in front of the city's federal building downtown on Sunday afternoon to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to U.S. military support for Israel. Palestinian-American Ehab Tamimi said he came to speak out both against the latest airstrikes and the blockade Israel has imposed on the Gaza Strip since 2007.
"There have been all sorts of resistance, most of which is nonviolent, to remove the blockade and have the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have their rights restored, their freedom of movement restored, the normality of their life restored, but nothing has actually happened in that sense," he said.
The Arizona demonstrations were some of a series of pro-Palestine events across the U.S. and world. On Tuesday, U.N. officials called for a humanitarian pause to allow aid supplies like food, water, medicine and fuel into Gaza, all of which have been restricted. The agency has also made repeated calls for a ceasefire amid increasing Israeli bombardments in recent days. Tamimi says it's personal, watching all of that unfold from from Tucson.
"There is deep, deep pain to see graphic images of people who look like me, who talk like me, who worship like me, who look like my family and who are my family, that are victims," he said. "I am in grief, I am in mourning, I am in pain. And it’s something that, honestly, I have to numb myself in order to function properly."
The latest round of Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip began earlier this month — after a Hamas attack that Israeli officials estimate killed at least 1,400 people in Israel.
Health authorities in Gaza report more than 5,700 people have been killed in Israeli bombardments there since then, almost half of whom were children. Almost two-thirds of roughly 2.3 million people living the Palestinian territory have been displaced from their homes, according to U.N. estimates.
