This article has been updated.
After months of lobbying from pro-Palestinian activists, members of the San Antonio City Council plan to consider a resolution in February calling for a cease-fire in Israel’s war with the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
In a memo to City Council on Tuesday, Mayor Ron Nirenberg announced plans to schedule a meeting on the issue next month, delaying action on a move that was originally expected to take place next week.
Although symbolic, such resolutions have been increasingly adopted by Democrat-majority cities in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war. City councils in Atlanta; Detroit; Seattle; Bridgeport, Connecticut; and Iowa City, Iowa, have passed some type of cease-fire resolution, while leaders in cities such as Burlington, Vermont, and Alameda, California, have seen similar resolutions defeated.
Nirenberg has personally expressed no desire for such a resolution, despite increasing calls from activists who have dominated recent City Council public comment sessions and protested outside his neighborhood.
But last month, in an unusual move, two of the council’s most progressive members, Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2) and Councilwoman Teri Castillo (D5), teamed up with an unlikely ally, potential mayoral contender Councilman Manny Pelaez (D8), in requesting a special meeting on the issue.
Three signatures on such a request compels the mayor to call a meeting, per the City Charter, and Nirenberg said he would formally call the meeting on Jan. 11 once the council members provided him with their proposed resolution.
Pelaez said Tuesday that after weeks of negotiations on the language, the three council members have settled on a two-sentence resolution.
“After the resolution was filed, we got a lot of very angry and heated and animated phone calls from the leaders of our Jewish community, but these are the same leaders to call and ask for extra police and patrols [during worship services],” said Pelaez, whose diverse Northwest district includes most of San Antonio’s synagogues. “I’ve been trying to communicate to them that it’s a local issue.”
A copy of the proposed resolution that was shared with the San Antonio Report says that as one of the largest U.S. cities, San Antonio has a “global voice to speak out and a responsibility to do so.” It goes on to call for “an immediate and permanent cease-fire in Israel and Palestine and the return of all hostages immediately.”
Pro-Palestinian activists initially sought a broad resolution similar to one Seattle’s City Council passed in November. Pelaez said he agreed to a much narrower version, which he believed captured the sentiment of most of his constituents, including both Muslim and Jewish leaders.
But Jewish leaders Pelaez has since heard from are unhappy the city is weighing in on a geopolitical issue, while Muslim leaders are disappointed the resolution didn’t go further.
“I recognize that I’ve grabbed onto a live wire,” Pelaez said.
“[Those responses] show me how raw feelings are around this, but I was hired by the people of San Antonio to help with difficult conversations, not to help with difficult conversations unless they’re too difficult,” he said.
Pelaez’s moves haven’t gone unnoticed by progressive organizers, who have played a big role in past council elections.
“He’s gearing up for a mayoral run and finding ways to be the mayor of a whole city versus the council representative for just one district,” said Alex Birnel, who serves on the leadership team for San Antonio for Justice in Palestine.
Members of San Antonio for Justice in Palestine previously called for supporters to pack a Jan. 11 meeting.
Nirenberg’s memo to council Tuesday said that Pelaez requested the meeting be delayed. In a Dec. 22 email to Nirenberg’s office, Pelaez said he wanted the meeting to be held in February because he would be out of town much of January, and he wanted to give local stakeholders time to share their perspectives with the council.
In an interview Wednesday, Pelaez characterized the move differently, saying the council members who signed the letter requested the meeting be held as soon as possible, but it’s “entirely up to the mayor when he wants to tee it up.”
