Local challenge over international conflict

The question is reverberating in the wake of a viral video of members of the public weighing in on an Oakland City Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza: Who cares what the Oakland City Council thinks about what’s going on in the Middle East?

Or the Richmond City Council, for that matter, which was the first city in the country to pass a resolution in October that said the city stood “in solidarity with the Palestinian people of Gaza,” and accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing.”

Or the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, which is likely to consider a resolution this week calling for a cease-fire and the release of all hostages. Or the Berkeley City Council, where demonstrators demanding a cease-fire resolution have forced it to convene meetings on Zoom, so it could conduct the city’s business without interruption — including demonstrators pounding on the walls of a nearby bathroom to disrupt the gathering, the city’s mayor told me.

Why should voters care what any local politician says about foreign policy? Shouldn’t those elected officials be more focused on crime, the lack of affordable housing, the fentanyl crisis and the many other problems California cities face?

Local officials are facing a unique challenge with determining how, when and if to speak out about the Middle East war that is dividing their communities.

Oakland City Council Member Dan Kalb acknowledged that “I totally get that” some voters want to know why local electeds are spending any time on an issue they have no control over.

But, he told me, “I just want people to know that it is not taking away any of my time in terms of doing that.”

That is tough to believe after the Oakland council spent nearly six hours Monday discussing the resolution at a special meeting. The intent of the resolution, said Council Member Carroll Fife, was to “to lift up the city of Oakland’s Love Life motto and to not call out what we condemn, but what we stand for. What we stand for is peace and the love of life around the world.”

Ultimately, the resolution called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the release of all hostages, unrestricted entry of humanitarian assistance to Gaza and the protection of innocent civilians.

Kalb tried to offer amendments that mentioned how “Hamas infiltrated Israel, brutally murdered over 1,200 people,” but failed. Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas said if the council were to entertain the amendments, it would also have to acknowledge that the conflict did not begin on Oct. 7, but rather “started hundreds of years ago” and that there have been “7,000 Palestinian political prisoners and more than 1 million people displaced.”

The council approved the resolution unanimously, without the amendment condemning Hamas.

Kalb said the high-profile discussion “may take up a few hours in the meeting. But in terms of the work that elected officials are doing or the city administration or whoever, it doesn’t take up a lot of time compared to everything else we’re doing. It just isn’t.”

So what’s the point? Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin told me his city has no plans to consider a resolution on the conflict, no matter what activists demand. Personally, he would like to see all the hostages freed, a pause in fighting and a two-state solution pursued.

But he said the city won’t be “bullied” into weighing in. At a recent meeting, he said, “we had people literally going to the bathrooms, banging on the walls to try to make noise and disrupt our meeting. It was pretty rowdy.”

“We’re going to continue to do the people’s business,” he told me.

Council members will continue to speak out on their own, but Arreguin said the city won’t use “taxpayer resources in a public meeting to do that when we have public safety issues, homelessness, a housing crisis.”

“I don’t think Berkeley passing a resolution is going to change the outcome of the conflict,” Arreguin told me. “I don’t think Benjamin Netanyahu or Hamas is going to change their thinking on the basis of what the city of Berkeley does.”

Wait, is this the same Berkeley City Council that has made its thoughts known through resolutions on international issues for decades, from the Ukraine-Russia war to the Iraq War to apartheid in South Africa?

“I think a majority of Berkeley was opposed to Russia’s war in Ukraine. We oppose the war in Iraq, we oppose apartheid in South Africa,” Arreguin said. “But there are divisions within the community about what’s happening in Israel and Gaza.”

Arreguin said he is concerned about the rise in both Islamophobia and antisemitism.

“I think my responsibility as a mayor is to focus on ensuring the safety of the community,” Arreguin said. “Unfortunately, resolutions like this are not are not productive and are going to create further division and create an environment where not everyone feels safe.”

That is why before Richmond considered its resolution in October, Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia instead proposed that representatives of the local Jewish and Palestinian communities come together to craft a joint resolution to avoid potential division. The council disagreed.

Gioia has served 25 years on the county board and is one of the longest-serving county supervisors in California. Taking tough votes that may divide the community is always a difficult part of the job. And he’s supported several resolutions over his tenure that involve international issues far from his district.

“But I always step back and say since this international resolution is not going to have a meaningful impact on international policy, what effect is it going to have in my own community, and is it going to divide my community further at times when we need to come together to solve local issues?” Gioia told me.

But Zahra Billoo, executive director of the San Francisco Bay office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told me that these resolutions do have intrinsic value for local communities.

Billoo said that to those whose communities have been affected by the violence, “resolutions like this communicate very strongly that ‘We see you. Our hearts are breaking with you. We care about this also.’ ” CAIR is helping organize support for San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston’s cease-fire resolution.

And while these resolutions don’t carry legal weight or affect local tax expenditures, Billoo said they can serve to influence local members of Congress.

That body controls where federal tax dollars are spent, including the $3.8 billion annually the U.S. gives to Israel for its military and missile defense systems.

“It is an important way for communities and local legislators to articulate that U.S. funding should be focused in the U.S.,” Billoo said. “We don’t have money for schools or homes, but are sending billions of dollars to Israel.”

Measuring the impact of these sorts of resolutions is challenging. But Billoo sees success in how public opinion polling has shown support for a cease-fire. An Economist/YouGov poll released Wednesday showed that 65% of adults support a cease-fire in the region. That same poll also found that 38% of the respondents felt more sympathy toward Israel in the conflict, 11% felt more toward the Palestinians, 28% felt an equal measure toward both and 23% weren’t sure.

But few polls of that scale are being taken on the local level. That forces many local politicians to rely on their knowledge of their communities.

And it also explains why some would rather not take a position. Gioia explained in his letter to the Richmond City Council before its vote last month that it would be better if the council would “play a leadership role to bring together our Muslim and Jewish communities.”

“I think if you were to ask the average resident in Richmond, they’d say, ‘Hey, stick to solving our problems locally. We have enough local issues to work on from crime and homelessness and our schools, then (for you) to weigh in on this and spend your time on that,’ ” Gioia told me.

Over his decades in public office, Gioia said he has learned that he only has a finite amount of political capital to solve the most pressing local issues, let alone international ones that he has virtually no power to influence.

Most voters only truly care about one or two key issues. Local elected officials can’t risk alienating them, as personal relationships are key to getting work done.

“So let’s say you take a position on an international issue, and it may be important, and then that position impacts your relationship with people you’re trying to work with to solve a local issue,” Gioia said. “And they’ll look at you and say, ‘I don’t trust you. I’m not going to work with you.’ ”

Gioia would rather leave complex international issues to Congress.

“I’ve got enough local issues to solve,” he said, “than to spend political capital trying to try to solve something that I have no power to really shape.”