In late July, the genocide in Gaza passed a harrowing milestone. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, the death toll from the conflict has passed 60,000, with the first indication that significant numbers of people were dying from starvation. With the ongoing blockade, the number of deaths will inexorably accelerate.

In acts of unfathomable cruelty, the Israelis have used what little aid that trickles into Gaza as weapons of war. The farcical organization the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the one aid organization sanctioned by Israel to distribute provisions to Palestinians, has been used to provide cover for open assaults on civilians. The reputable Doctors Without Borders has referred to the organization’s scheme to deliver provisions as “not aid (but)… orchestrated killing.” Meanwhile, the other aid scheme approved by Israel, the parachuting of boxes to Gazans, has been criticized as a reckless publicity stunt where several Gazans have been crushed by the tumbling supplies. 

Under the fog of war Gaza has gone from the world’s largest prison camp to the world’s largest death camp. Worst still, the fog of war is not even thick. Nearly everyone knows these atrocities are occurring.

The international community rightly recognizes that Israel is committing a genocide. Even in the United States, whose ongoing support for Israel makes it the handmaiden of these horrors, popular opinion has dramatically turned against Israel. According to a recent Gallup poll, 60% of Americans disapprove of Israel’s military actions in Gaza, with 52% of Americans having an unfavorable view of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

And yet, the destruction continues. Congress, in its detachment from the American people, remains unmoved by the population’s growing dissent to the genocide. On July 30, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) forced a vote in the Senate to block further arms sales to Israel. While the vote was an indication that Democratic opposition to the genocide was growing—with 27 Democrats, more than half the caucus, voting for the resolution—the measure failed by a significant number. Even if it were to pass the Senate, the resolution would have to make it through the Republican-controlled House and then overcome an inevitable veto by President Trump. 

As usual, America’s system of checks-and-balances has been manipulated to check against the will of its people and remain balanced toward the nation’s war machine.   

The situation is harrowing, but not fatalistic, at least not yet. Growing resistance to the genocide is an indication that majoritarian power, if properly mobilized, can be used to stop the slaughter. In this battle, the first line of victory is America’s cities.

When fighting first erupted, seventy cities throughout the United States passed resolutions calling for a ceasefire and a release of the hostages. In Chicago, the largest of the cities, the ceasefire resolution narrowly passed and exposed deep divides—if not outright contradictions—within the Democratic Party between those who stand for universal values and those who remained committed to supporting Israel’s project of Jewish supremacy. 

Now, however, those ceasefire resolutions have become antiquated. Whatever imprimatur of warfare the conflict originally had has dissipated. Months of murdering Palestinian children and the willful forced starvation of literally the entire population has made it clear that Israel is not interested in peace; its leaders want to ethnically cleanse the population of Gaza.

In an escalation of tactics, city councils are being pressed to disinvest from companies that are complicit in the ongoing genocide. In September of last year, Portland, Oregon’s city council unanimously passed a resolution demanding the city manager disinvest from any entities “complicit in the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.” More recently, Medford, Massachusetts’s city council voted for a sweeping resolution disinvesting the city from any entity that engages in human rights violations. 

Targeting corporations that are complicit in the destruction of Palestine is essential, but additional steps need to be taken to enforce international law. Both Israel and the United States (especially under the Trump administration) have exhibited utter contempt for global legal norms. Americans have been here before. During the Iraq War, two southern Vermont towns—Brattleboro and Marlboro—called on their local law enforcement to arrest then President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for violating the United Nations Charter. While the resolutions were nonbinding, they asserted the criminality of the Bush regime in the face of the horrors of the Iraq War. Today, city councils should pass similar resolutions against President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu.

The lawlessness of the United States and Israel cannot go unchecked. America’s federal government has not only refused to bind the United States to the International Criminal Court (ICC) but is committed to militarily invading the court if it asserts its jurisdiction over the United States or its allies. This means it is up to America’s local governments to be the voice of reason and humanity by committing themselves to cooperating with the ICC, including enforcing the ICC’s warrants against the war criminals of the Gaza conflict.

In addition to these efforts, there must be municipal campaigns to preserve and humanize Palestinian society. Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine is the ultimate conclusion of their decades long campaign of politicide, the willful destruction of Palestine’s political institutions to render Palestinians completely incapable of asserting their right to self-determination. Municipalities can save Palestinian self-governance by implicitly recognizing the legitimacy of a Palestinian state and forming Sister City relations with Palestinian municipalities. Sister City relationships are compacts between cities that commit their governing bodies to engage in civic, cultural, and economic exchanges. Already, Muscatine, Iowa has formed a Sister City relationship with Ramallah and Boulder, Colorado has one with Nablus. 

Tragically, there is no foreseeable end to the genocide outside of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza. With the recent announcement by the Netanyahu government that Israel plans to militarily occupy Gaza city, the rogue nation has stepped closer to that goal. Israel must be stopped, and the only country able to stop them is the United States. Pressuring the federal government to change its policies toward Israel must start—as it always does in American politics—with changes in state and local governments. 

Using municipal power, the Palestinian solidarity movement can win; first, it needs to start winning local communities, then, using this political strength, it must eventually move forward and take down global powers. 

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