After hearing from scores of residents at a sometimes raucous, hours-long meeting, Long Beach City Council members on Tuesday officially signed off on a statement in support of a “lasting humanitarian ceasefire” to bring an end to the war in Gaza.

The council’s decision followed weeks of pressure from pro-Palestine protesters, who demanded that city leaders pass a ceasefire resolution as a handful of other communities around the state — including Oakland and Stanton — have done.

Mayor Rex Richardson said that as a diverse community with far-reaching ties, Long Beach is seeing reflections of the pain happening in other parts of the world.

“We as a city are not immune to what happens outside of our boundaries,” Mayor Rex Richardson said. “We’re seeing incidents, reports of additional incidents of violence and hate, and all of these things showing up in our communities.”

The war in Gaza started after Hamas’s brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which left an estimated 1,200 Israelis dead and about 240 more taken as hostages. The resulting conflict has devastated large swaths of Gaza, killing more than 19,000 Palestinians and sending 1.9 million people fleeing to shelters and refugee camps, the Associated Press has reported.

Israeli leaders have drawn criticism for the large number of civilian deaths in Gaza, and the issue has become a political flashpoint in this country. The U.S. has provided more than $14.5 billion in military aid to Israel and more than $120 million in humanitarian assistance for Gaza.

On Tuesday, more than 160 people showed up to address the Long Beach City Council about its ceasefire proclamation, some of them waiting hours just to get 60 seconds to share their thoughts.

There were impassioned speeches from both sides of an issue that illustrated its intractability.

Resident Yetta Kane, who said she’s a Holocaust survivor, described some of the atrocities Hamas committed in Israel on Oct. 7 and said Israel “did not start the fight.”

Two women wait in line to address the Long Beach City Council as it considers a proclamation supporting a ceasefire in Gaza Tuesday Dec. 19, 2023. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova.

Others, including resident Joaquín Beltrán, pointed to the need for food, water and other humanitarian aid for Palestinians and warned, “We don’t need to wait for history to know this genocide is wrong.”

The proclamation Long Beach officials approved on Tuesday urges federal officials to support negotiations toward “a peaceful resolution that achieves both an end to the attacks on Israel by Hamas, and the protection of civilian life in Gaza and Israel.”

But two other passages in the proclamation represent the very difficult needle the council seemed to be trying to thread: “Palestinian people deserve self-determination. Israel has a right to defend itself.”

Some speakers said they might support the proclamation if it more strongly condemned Hamas and demanded its surrender; others said it was a start but should go further by calling for a permanent ceasefire.

As one resident asked the council, “You know you’re not going to appease everybody, so what’s the point of doing this?”

Members of the audience cheer after Long Beach City Council members passed a proclamation supporting a ceasefire in Gaza. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova.

Several speakers who opposed the proclamation urged council members to leave international affairs to federal officials, with Kelly Cooper, a cantor at Temple Israel Long Beach, telling them, “This proclamation does nothing but divide this community.”

That message seemed to hit home for some on the dais. Councilmember Joni Ricks-Oddie, who helped lead the effort to gather input from local faith leaders and draft the proclamation, called it a first step and noted one of its provisions says the city will seek resources to support residents affected by the conflict.

Councilmembers Kristina Duggan and Daryl Supernaw voted against the proclamation, with Duggan critical of what she called “divisive tactics” used in getting the issue before the council and Supernaw saying the constituents he heard from were overwhelmingly opposed.

Before the vote, Councilmember Megan Kerr told her colleagues that the war and the process of discussing it in Long Beach have been painful, but she hopes they’ll continue the longer-term work of finding common ground.

“Tomorrow we wake up needing to bring our community back together and to continue to hold hope for lasting peace,” she said.

Editor’s note: This story previously stated incorrectly that the Santa Ana City Council had passed a ceasefire resolution. It has only considered passing one. It’s also been updated to correct the name of Temple Israel Long Beach.