President Joe Biden faces a major challenge. The recent pro-Palestinian protests threaten to escalate. Calls for a ceasefire are getting louder.
Chicago - The traffic-threatening pro-Palestinian demonstrations in US cities on Monday (April 15) could be a foretaste of a potentially explosive summer of protests. President Joe Biden will face a challenge. Debate has already erupted over whether some activists' tactics threaten to undermine public support for their movement.
As part of a global campaign to draw attention to the Israeli war in the Gaza Strip on US Tax Day (the latest tax return deadline), demonstrators in San Francisco and New York, among others, closed off major roads for hours.
In Chicago and Seattle, protesters blocked entrances to international airports, forcing travelers and airline crews to walk to airline terminals or potentially miss their flights. In San Francisco, police had to use welding equipment to free protesters from the Bay Bridge after they chained themselves together with pipes.
Pro-Palestine demonstrations at US universities – Biden faces a challenge
The chaos is unfolding as the United States heads into a delicate period surrounding the presidential election. Biden and former President Donald Trump will appear at their parties' nominating conventions this summer, and both events are expected to draw large numbers of protesters. This summer also marks four years since protests erupted across the country following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Already, members of Congress, college administrators and some major city mayors have begun tightening controls on access to their events to minimize disruption. Some colleges, including the University of Michigan, are explicitly warning their students that they will face expulsion if they disrupt end-of-semester events.
The protests so far are just the beginning - calls for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip are getting louder
At least so far, pro-Palestinian protests have been relatively small compared to the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020. Analysts also point out that historically there are limits to how large a social movement can become when the issue is not taking place in the United States or directly involving American troops.
But on Monday, organizers of the pro-Palestinian protests promised that the action so far was just the beginning of more direct engagement. Analysts also say the demonstrations will almost certainly bring more unpredictability to this year's political calendar.
“If this continues for another six months, I would expect the types of tactics used to escalate and we see more extreme protests,” said Omar Wasow, an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied protest movements extensively since civil rights era. “There will be a more militant faction that advocates more extreme tactics.”
In an interview with the
Washington Post,
an organizer of Monday's demonstrations in California suggested just that. “Today is proof that people are fighting and will continue to escalate until there is a permanent ceasefire,” said Sha Wiya Falcon, who took part in a demonstration that blocked a highway in Oakland.
Biden between the election campaign and peace negotiations in the Middle East
Analysts note that the pro-Palestinian movement is now a widespread network of groups, many of which have different views on what tactics are acceptable or effective. Many of the groups have a diffuse leadership structure - or no leader at all - and this can make it particularly difficult to predict the movement's next steps. In the civil rights era, Wasow said, there was a cohesive group of leaders who provided guidelines for the types of tactics that could be used at different times.
But analysts say any protest activity in the coming weeks will pose a new challenge for Biden. He will struggle to balance his government's support for Israel with his liberal coalition's growing demands for an immediate end to the conflict.
Four years ago, in the midst of the Black Lives Matter protests, it was Trump who sat in the White House as some demonstrations became disruptive and shook some Americans' confidence in the country's stability. This year, it is Biden who will have to reassure voters as disruptive protests become commonplace. He also needs to win over younger voters, who make up a significant portion of the overall pro-Palestinian movement.
How much will the pro-Palestine demonstrations hurt Biden?
Vincent Pons, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, recently published a study showing that protest movements generally do not factor into Americans' political considerations at the ballot box. Of 14 protests and movements studied from 2017 to 2021, Pons concluded that only the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020 "increased the vote for Democrats."
“Overall, our results suggest the limited success of recent waves of protests in changing the beliefs and behavior of the U.S. electorate, at least in the short term,” the report said. But Pons says pro-Palestinian protests could increase in the coming months because activists know Biden "doesn't want the disruption."
“Whether the protests continue or not will depend on whether they feel heard by the government,” said Pons. “The fact that the protests are taking place so close to the presidential election may indicate that the government is more likely to pay attention to them.”
Majority of Americans disapprove of Israel's war in Gaza
Wasow agrees, saying one lesson from the civil rights era is that protesters' "more extreme tactics" are more influential among "elites" trying to prevent upheaval.
“When protesters use extreme tactics, they may lose publicity, but they send a signal to leaders who then want to take control of the problem,” Wasow said. “In this way, extreme tactics can be damaging at the ballot box, but they can also help get political answers from leaders.” The evolution of pro-Palestinian protests comes as public opinion about the war changes Gaza has changed.
In late March, Gallup released a poll showing that 55 percent of Americans disapprove of Israel's military operation in Gaza, while 36 percent approve of it. Only 18 percent of Democrats now support the action, whereas in November 36 percent of Democrats supported the action.
But analysts warn that pro-Palestinian protesters could undermine public opinion if the public feels protesters are using protest tactics that are too radical.
More extreme protests by pro-Palestine demonstrators could alienate the US population
Robb Willer, a professor of psychology and sociology at Stanford University, has conducted research showing that “extreme tactics reduce popular support for social movements.” Willer said public support is beginning to turn away from movements that "destroy property, cause physical harm to other people or significantly disrupt daily life."
Blocking access to major airports or highways, as pro-Palestinian protesters did on Monday, would generally fall into the category that could lead to a public backlash, Willer said. However, these tactics increase media attention, making some activists consider this trade-off worthwhile.
“We call it the activist dilemma,” Willer said. "They're really good at getting media attention... different movements, at different stages of mobilization, may have a different calculation about whether the compromise is worth it."
Pro-Palestine protests make the problems in Gaza visible to US citizens
Khalil Abualya, a second-generation Palestinian American who has helped organize some low-profile demonstrations at the University of Mississippi, worries about internal divisions within the movement.
Abualya says that in the last six months, Americans have become more familiar with and sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. For example, his colleagues on campus no longer ask him if he is from Pakistan when he tells them he is Palestinian.
But he fears that some of the progress he and other activists have made is at risk if other protesters "close roads and bridges and hurt people." “I think this is a dangerous game because in this moment, in this situation, we are the face of the problem,” Abualya said. “Everything we do has real-life consequences.”
Biden in danger of losing core Democratic voters
Still, Abualya sees some benefit in making Biden uncomfortable. The pharmacy student has already decided he will not vote for Biden in November, underscoring the challenge for the president to decisively win over young voters, just as he did in 2020. “I definitely won’t vote for Biden,” said Abualya, 23. “He watched our families being decimated in Gaza for six months.”
Youssef Chouhoud, a political science professor at Christopher Newport University in Virginia, said the ongoing protests only make it clearer how much Biden has lost support from core Democratic voters because of the war.
Chouhoud, who is Egyptian American, said there is a "large portion" of Muslim Americans who would refuse to vote for Biden if the election were held today.
“I don’t see any signs that (the protests,
editor’s note
) will subside,” said Chouhoud. “They may change in terms of manner, but in terms of intensity ... the issue is still relevant to a large portion of the Democratic electorate.”
We are currently testing machine translations. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English on April 17, 2024 at the “Washingtonpost.com” - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.