About 60 people were arrested on Tuesday for protesting at the U.S. Capitol building.
The protesters showed up to the building to demand that a ceasefire be called between Hamas and Israel. The demonstration was held just as senators were preparing to leave the nation’s capital for their holiday break.
Just as the people started to protest, officers with U.S. Capitol Police arrested them immediately. The people were escorted out of the Capitol Rotunda, all of whom had their wrists secured by zip ties.
In a statement that the Capitol Police emailed to media outlets, the agency said:
“We were aware of a group’s potential plan to take a tour of the U.S. Capitol Building and then start a protest. It is against the law to demonstrate inside the Congressional Buildings, so we brought in additional officers to be prepared for the moment the group would break the law.
“The group was screened when they entered the building. Once they broke the law, roughly 60 people were immediately arrested.”
Protesters were carrying signs that called for the immediate ceasefire in fighting, and they were chanting while they did so.
In an attempt to bring calm to the situation, USCP officers blocked all onlookers from also entering the Capitol Rotunda.
The organizers of the protest were prepared not just for the day but also for the aftermath. The organizers of it, after all, released a statement about the incident that read:
“We want Congress and (President Joe) Biden to act on Permanent Ceasefire NOw by stopping all military funding to Israel. We demand that the United States stop arming Israel and facilitating genocide in Gaza.
“We demand that there be no further border violence or genocide in our names, funded with our tax dollars. In short, we demand that our leaders divest from militarism, and invest in life.”
They even wrote a press release that said that bombs from Israel kill 280 people in Gaza each day on average.
The Senate is currently enthralled in negotiations over the president’s $100 billion proposal to provide supplemental aid to Ukraine to help the country fight back Russia. Included in that package is funding for Israel as well as U.S. security priorities.
Senators have said they are optimistic about a deal being reached eventually, a deal that likely would include significant reforms on immigration, Republicans in the upper chamber said that agreement likely wouldn’t happen before Christmas.
And even if the Senate were to come to an agreement, the GOP-led House would have to take it up and pass it as well.
Many groups and even members of the United Nations have called for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. To this point, though, Israel has denied those requests, and the U.S. hasn’t joined in the call for it either.
The war between Israel and the terrorist organization that’s based in Gaza has been raging on for more than two months now.
