Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper
CLEVELAND, Ohio- A roughly 1,000 person rally that began Friday outside of Crocker Mall in Weslake to protest and demand an end to Israeli assaults on Palestinians from Sheik Jarrah to Jerusalem to Gaza continued Sunday afternoon on Public Square in downtown Cleveland with hundreds of people showing up there too.
The Middle eastern conflict has caused tensions to escalate in the United States between Palestinians and Jews as the U.S. government seeks to mediate a peace deal abroad between the two sides.
Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City destroyed several buildings and killed at least 52 people Sunday in a residential area, the deadliest single attack since heavy fighting broke out last week between Israel and the territory's militant Hamas rulers, a nationalist organization.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised that the fourth war against Gaza's Hamas would rage on indefinitely if necessary.
The violence there in the past week marks the worst fighting since the 2014 war in Gaza with nearly 230 people killed, 58 children and 34 women.
Some 11 Israels have been killed in this latest conflict.
Palestinian militants say they destroyed a synagogue and fired 130 missiles at the Israeli city of Tel Aviv after an Israeli air strike took down a tower block in the Gaza Strip.
The tower block building at issue contained offices for Al Jazeera and the Associated Press, along with other media outlets who were warned an hour ahead of time to get out for safety.
Israeli military leaders said journalists in the building, some of them Arab, are pro-Palestinian and were being used as "human shields."
While the Gaza strip is under control of Hamas, Israel controls most of the West Bank, which it claims it has historic rights to.
Protesters at the Cleveland Public Square rally Sunday afternoon, led by Palestinian-American activists, chanted, “Free, free Palestine," and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “Gaza, Gaza don’t you cry, Palestine will never die.”
Sunday's rally in Cleveland and the one held Friday in suburban Westlake, both in support of Palestinians, follow a 500-person pro-Israel protest held on May 12 in the city of Beachwood, an affluent Cleveland suburb with a heavy Jewish population, a rally that began at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage at 5 p.m. and ended at the Jewish Federation of Greater Cleveland.
The Cleveland area rallies held over the past week, whether in support of Israel or Palestine, are inclusive of dozens around the country in response to a week of missile fighting along the West-Bank and in Gaza between Israelis and Palestinians, a by-product of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a decades-long dispute between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle east.
And nobody, including the last five United States presidents, up to former president Donald Trump, who lost reelection last year to current President Joe Biden, can seem to broker even a peace proposal.
President Biden has called for a cease fire by Israeli forces, and wants the two sides to end the war peacefully, and fairly.
Though the conflict has its roots in the 19th and 20th centuries, tensions grew when Britain, during World War ll, took control of the area known as Palestine, which was then inhabited by Jews and Palestinians, but mainly Palestinians, and began creating a "national home" in Palestine for Jewish people.
Before that time Jordan occupied land which became known as the West Bank, and Egypt occupied Gaza.
For Jews, it was their ancestral home and the creation of the state of Israel, which they announced in 1948.
But Palestinian Arabs claimed the land and opposed the move taken by Britain to hand territory to Israel that they say belongs to them.
Since the British Mandate, the term "Palestine" has been associated with the geographical area that currently covers the State of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The term "Palestinian territories" has been used for many years to describe the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip.
Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the Six-Day War of 1967 and has since maintained control.
The decades-long fighting behind the dispute has continued with Israel occupying most of the territory, and some 20 percent of those who live in Israel are Arab, which complicates the matter further.
Civilian lives have been lost on both sides.
U.S. Sen Bernie Sanders, a former presidential candidate and socialist Democrat, called for an even-handed approach to the conflict and said that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is flat out racist.
Sanders said that the debate over Israel's 'right to defend itself' lacks context.
