After months of protests from local groups demanding the New Orleans City Council call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in the war in the Gaza Strip, council members are now drafting a resolution that will address the conflict. 

The resolution would align the council with a “statement for peace” backed by a coalition of local faith and community leaders, based on a draft obtained by Verite News. The resolution could go to a vote as early as next week, according to multiple council staff members. 

“We support the diplomatic efforts by the United States for a negotiated ceasefire, including the release of all hostages, and emphasize that far too many lives have been lost,” reads a portion of the Statement for Peace NOLA that is cited in the council’s draft resolution.

Since January, activists have staged protests at council meetings to call for a ceasefire resolution.

At least 100 other U.S. cities have passed ceasefire resolutions — most recently Birmingham, Alabama. But the proposed New Orleans statement, modeled after a similar statement released in December by the city of Lexington, Kentucky, is different than many of those. While it expresses support for diplomatic efforts to establish a ceasefire agreement, it stops short of a clear call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. 

“Supporting peace goes without saying,” Councilmember Eugene Green told Verite News. “I do recognize that it brings the council in on matters that are much higher than our local considerations, but it is fair and balanced and calls for peace.”

But it’s not clear whether the proposed New Orleans resolution, which is framed as a “peace” statement and not explicitly as a “ceasefire” resolution, will pass muster for activists. 

“We’re not asking them to do anything that other people and cities have not done,” Hakm Murad, a local Palestinian resident and organizer with Louisiana 4 Palestine, said. “We showed them several resolution drafts of other cities that you would consider comparable to New Orleans. So, they had their pick of the litter. We didn’t come to them telling that this is how they should do it.” 

Murad is also worried that one line in the statement — which says that “calls for violence and conflict… are contrary to the values of our community” — risks mischaracterizing the ongoing local pro-Palestine protests as violent when they have been nonviolent. 

Councilmember Joe Giarrusso, who met with activists on at least two occasions, said the peace resolution will finally give pro-ceasefire protesters what they have been asking for: a public discussion of the conflict in Gaza in the council chambers.

Early protests at council meetings involved minor disruptions, such as chanting “Free Palestine.” But in recent months, protesters have co-opted the council’s agendas to deliver public comments throughout each meeting.

Councilmembers have pushed back, cutting off protesters in the middle of their comments and turning off the microphone in efforts to redirect the meetings.

“The people in the ceasefire camp are frustrated that they have not, for lack of a better term, had their day in court,” Giarrusso told Verite News. “And so this statement came out, I read it and thought it was worthy of my signature and making sure that there is a domain item that the people who are wanting a space to make comment at council meetings, to give them that.”

The other five councilmembers either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment by publication time. 

On Wednesday (July 31), the organizers behind the Statement for Peace NOLA officially released the statement and a list of its 49 signatories.“This unified statement highlights the strength and resilience of New Orleans, a city known for its diversity and solidarity,” the statement reads. “The signatories urge the community to reject hate and violence, advocating instead for compassion, empathy, and peaceful resolution of conflicts.” (On Friday, Aug. 2, the number of signatories was revised to 48, following a decision by Voice of the Experienced Founder and Executive Director Norris Henderson to withdraw his signature.)

This will be the first time the council will consider weighing in on the conflict since Oct. 7, when Hamas-led fighters staged a surprise attack on Israel, killing 1,200 people. The attack was met with a fierce response from the Israeli military. Since October, nearly 40,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, according to some estimates, and another 2 million Palestinians have been displaced by the conflict.

Council slow to respond to calls for resolution

As reports began to tally tens of thousands of Palestinian casualties in Israel’s campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, cities around the U.S. began to issue symbolic ceasefire resolutions, often in response to protests on the ground.

In Louisiana, protesters have taken to the streets in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, calling for a halt to violence in the Israel-Hamas war and imploring the U.S. to stop sending military aid to Israel.

After a December protest resulted in the collection of over 3,000 signatures of local residents in support of a ceasefire, Murad and other protesters decided to approach the City Council. 

But New Orleans councilmembers have been slow to move on any collective, public stance regarding the overseas conflict. 

“When it comes to national and international politics, I’m not going to be the person who leads or sponsors on that because I don’t think that’s what we’re elected to do,” Giarrusso said. “I was very clear, particularly with the pro-ceasefire crowd, that that’s been my M.O. now for five years.”

The council has waded into the Israel-Palestine conflict in the past, with chaotic results. In 2018, councilmembers passed a resolution to consider divestment from corporations whose practices violate human rights. Though the resolution did not name Israel or Israeli companies, it was drafted with the New Orleans Palestinian Solidarity Committee as part of a campaign to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel for its occupation of the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank. The resolution caused a slew of international headlines and admonishment, and the council eventually backtracked.

Still, Murad and other pro-ceasefire protesters embarked on a months-long effort to pressure the council, drawing supporters from other respected community groups. Murad believed the political calculus had changed in the past year, with human rights experts deeming the violence in Gaza a likely genocide and polls documenting growing American disapproval of Israel’s military actions in Gaza.

Crowds of protesters at council meetings reached their height in May following the demolition of a pro-Palestine encampment on Tulane University’s campus, which led to the arrests of 14 individuals. More than one hundred protesters showed up at the City Council chamber and called on the council to support a ceasefire resolution, as well as condemn the Tulane administration for the arrests. But the councilmembers did not engage.

As summer approached, the number of protesters waned. The tenor also began to change: protesters and councilmembers alike seemed exasperated by the impasse. A sign appeared in the council chamber that warned: “No person may take any action to unreasonably disturb or interfere with a Council meeting.”

Despite the public standstill, behind the scenes, Giarrusso and Councilmember Helena Moreno began to lead work on a potential resolution, according to emails obtained by Verite News and interviews with council staffers and members of pro-ceasefire groups. 

In June, Giarrusso began floating the peace statement from Lexington, Kentucky, as a model for a potential New Orleans resolution, asking if ceasefire organizers and leaders of a local synagogue wanted to co-sign a similar statement. Organizers with Louisiana 4 Palestine wrote back, saying they sought “a more robust and decisive response from our city.” The organizers also noted that activists in Lexington continued to protest for a resolution that called for an immediate ceasefire.

After that exchange, Murad said protesters have received little information from councilmembers about the drafted resolution. They continued to email councilmembers, offering to participate in the process, but were told that a resolution was in the works and would be publicly available soon. 

The council is now expected to finalize the “statement for peace” resolution on Monday (Aug. 5) and could bring it to a vote as early as the full council meeting next Thursday (Aug. 8). 

“I understand there will be a group of people who want to go in different directions,” Giarrusso said. “The bottom line, though, is that this is what, as a group, the council feels comfortable with, and because there has been this extended discussion of what is relevant, what is not relevant, then this is your opportunity to lay out what you want to say publicly.”

This story was updated to reflect Norris Henderson’s decision to withdraw his signature from the Statement For Peace.

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Katie Jane Fernelius reports on the local government for Verite. Prior to joining Verite, she was an independent journalist and producer. Over the course of her career, she’s reported for and worked...