By Rabia Iclal Turan
WASHINGTON (AA) - As the Democratic National Convention (DNC) started in Chicago on Monday, representatives from the “Uncommitted” Movement are calling on Vice President Kamala Harris, set this week to take the mantle as the Democratic candidate for president, to change US policy on Gaza, including an embargo on arms sales to Israel.
“The Democratic Party must live up to its promise of justice and equality and dignity, and dignity for all that includes Palestinians,” Layla Elabed, a co-founder of the Uncommitted National Movement, told a press conference in Chicago, in the Midwestern state of Illinois, on day one of the convention.
Monday is set to feature a panel on Palestinian human rights, a first in the history of the DNC. This event comes amid ongoing grassroots efforts opposing the US policy of unconditional support to Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, which many Democratic voters see as “genocidal.”
A Gallup survey in June found that 69% of Democrats oppose Israel's military operations in Gaza, versus only 23% supporting them. In contrast, 76% of Republicans expressed approval for Israel’s operations, while only 19% disapproved.
The US is by far the biggest supplier of arms to Israel, with more than 70% of its arms imports coming from the US, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. US-made weapons were photographed several times in Israeli strikes in Gaza although US authorities have declined to confirm.
More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed during Israel's war in Gaza since last October, the vast majority of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. A total of 1,139 people were killed in a cross-border attack led by Hamas on Oct. 7, according to Israeli figures.
“I recognize that we have secured a historical precedent, and for the first time in DNC history, in our country's history, there's going to be an official panel of the Democratic National Party discussing Palestinian human rights, voiced by Palestinians, Arab Americans, and Jewish allies. That is one step in the right direction to recognize the pain and suffering caused by our US policy decisions,” said Elabed of the Uncommitted Movement.
She added that they have also demanded the DNC allow speaking time for a Palestinian American from the main stage, and a policy change that “saves lives and ends the occupation of Palestinians.”
She warned Harris that she is at risk of losing key swing states, especially Michigan, where 310,000 people of Middle Eastern and North African descent live, or about 3.1% of the population.
- ‘We need Harris to tell us her plan’
More than 100,000 Democratic Michigan voters selected “uncommitted” in the state's presidential primary election in February, after the “Uncommitted” campaign encouraged voters to protest the Gaza policy of President Joe Biden, who was then seeking reelection.
Abbas Alawieh, an uncommitted delegate from Michigan and one of the founders of the movement, pledged that they will mobilize for Harris’s campaign if she comes out and supports a policy that stops sending US weapons to Israel weapons that are killing civilians in Gaza.
“We need the vice president to tell us what their plan is, (as) absent that we won't have the credibility to go back and tell those voters an affirmative message that embraces Vice President Harris' plan, because we don't know what her plan is,” he told reporters during the same press conference.
Jeremiah Ellison, another uncommitted delegate from Minnesota and a member of the Minneapolis City Council, said they are representing 800,000 people around the country who voted uncommitted in various states.
“We're not the only delegates who agree with the (proposal for a) cease-fire. We're not the only delegates that think there should be an arms embargo,” he added.
Lilian Jimenez, an Illinois state lawmaker, said many people from Illinois and across the country are “standing with the majority of people who are asking for a cease-fire, asking for an arms embargo.”