Palo Alto wanted to move past citizen demands for a cease-fire. Will its experiment work?

Palo Alto, like city governments across the Bay Area and beyond, has been besieged by demands that it call for a cease-fire in Gaza. Other citizens, meanwhile, are just as vocal that local lawmakers shouldn’t spend time on issues on the other side of the world.

So it decided to try something different.

Its experimental idea: to identify “who are the people who are the most vocal at public comment, and let’s invite them in for a deeper conversation,” said City Council Member Vicki Veenker. 

If the goal was to get people in opposite camps to come together and learn how to talk to one another civilly, it’s showing some signs of success. If the goal was to move beyond the calls for a cease-fire that are consuming the council’s time, well, that hasn’t happened yet. It is early, but Palo Alto’s experiment is worth watching for other local governments facing the same dilemma: Can cities get out of the business of foreign policy-making and focus on bringing their residents together?

It sounds insane if you’ve ever heard the public comment period at any public meeting anywhere, no matter what the topic. Not surprisingly, this is believed to be the first time a California city has brought a group of Israelis, Palestinians, Muslims, Jews and allies to work together. 

But the goal of the eight-person advisory group Palo Alto Mayor Greer Stone assembled in March wasn’t to create some sort of model United Nations political statement about the Middle East. It was to look inward. To explore how the pain of the Israel-Hamas war 7,000 miles away had rippled to the Silicon Valley city of 63,635 where the median income is $214,118. It was to help city residents craft a statement of shared values so that each side felt heard, respected and safe. Because neither camp does now. 

That’s what city leaders feel they can do best. If Palo Alto residents want to talk to someone who can directly affect U.S. policy, they should reach out to their local House member, Rep. Anna Eshoo, or one of California’s senators. 

“I had made it very clear that I wouldn’t agendize a cease-fire resolution because I didn’t feel like it was within the purview of the City Council and that we should be staying out of geopolitical matters,”  Stone told me. 

The four-paragraph statement the council passed this month is full of inclusive, apolitical messages like “We encourage residents to show civility, compassion and understanding in support of their neighbors who may be in great pain and suffering.”

It didn’t offer any profound political insight. But that wasn’t the goal, said Veenker: “The process was in many ways as important as the statement that resulted.”

The early results since the council approved the unity statement this month have been both transcendent and intransigent.

Those involved in crafting the statement found that coming together enabled them to start to find their shared values of family and community. Others said knowing someone with a different viewpoint on the war makes it easier to reach out if concerned about a potential protest in town. Or when the latest news from overseas is too heavy to process.

But that doesn’t mean residents feel any different about whether the City Council should call for a cease-fire. 

Most of the two dozen speakers during the public comment period of Monday’s City Council meeting made some sort of reference to the impacts of the Israel-Hamas war. 

One parent spoke of the anti-Semitism his child has felt while attending college on the East Coast. The children of a kaffiyeh-wearing parent described how they were harassed by passers-by while participating in a pro-Palestinian demonstration during President Joe Biden’s recent visit to the area for a political fundraiser. And others continued to call for a cease-fire resolution. 

City leaders don’t expect the calls for political statements to go away. 

“We’re not trying to stifle people’s political views. This is not an exercise to get people to change their minds,” Veenker said. “This is an effort to get people to figure out how to exercise free speech while still being in a community where people feel respected and safe. That’s hard. And that’s what we were trying.”

Stone made an ideal move in choosing Veenker to shepherd the unity statement group. Her day job is being a high-level professional mediator, one who has navigated the thorniest issues, including patent law and health care reform.

Yet few subjects entwine personal and political pain like the Middle East.

Veenker started the first of three 90-minutes in-person meetings at City Hall by asking the group to describe what their feelings have been since the Oct. 7 attacks. Words and phrases like “anguish,” “sadness,” “lack of safety,” “unheard,” “unvalued,” came up, some by both camps. 

Then group members were asked what they wanted their experience to be in the future by completing the phrase, “We want (fill in the blank) in Palo Alto.” 

The conversations were often difficult.

Lama Rimawi, a Palestian American pediatrician who practices in Palo Alto, shared that many people she deals with feel traumatized when they “are witnessing the potential genocide of Palestinians.” Someone in the other camp said that they found the word “genocide,” triggering and she shouldn’t use the word. 

Rimawi responded that “it’s really triggering for me not to be able to describe the potential genocide of my own people.” 

Rimawi praised the unity document as “a beautiful statement,” while acknowledging that it won’t fully satisfy people on either side of the issue. While some residents may think that cities shouldn’t get involved in a foreign policy issue, she said there is a need for cities to take action because “people here are being traumatized by what’s happening there.”

Yazan Alnahhas, a Palestinian American who served on the committee, appreciated the opportunity to “talk calmly about values, which should be universal, and not very controversial.” Like how the value of one life equals the value of another life and everybody is equal. Including those sentiments in the unity statement is a “positive first step,” Alnahhas, an engineer, said.

But “we continue to believe that being able to reach a cease-fire that’s respected by both sides is needed,” Alnahhas said.

Lori Meyers, a panel member who is Jewish, said she thought the unity statement was “wonderful on several levels,” and appreciated the city’s effort. 

“The events that are happening 7,000 miles away are tragic. And heartbreaking,” she said. “But there’s really nothing that a city council can do about something that’s 7,000 miles away. But there’s something that they can do about things that are happening right in their backyard.”

That didn’t stop Meyers from discussing the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” during the public comment period of Monday’s City Council meeting. Describing the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, is frequently heard as a rallying cry for the liberation of the Palestinian people. But others insist it refers to a desire for the annihilation of the state of Israel, and note its past use by Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Meyers told me she’s heard it used twice at recent pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Palo Alto. When she asked two young rally-goers at one event what they thought it meant, she said they told her they didn’t know.  

“So my goal (at Monday’s public comment) was to educate and inform and if people still choose to say things like that, then that’s their freedom of speech,” Meyers, a K-8 school principal, said. “But they should know the kind of company they’re keeping.”

It’s too early to tell where this unity effort goes from here. There has been preliminary talk among the advisory group of cooperating on a cross-cultural art show in Palo Alto.

Regardless, Greer said, the next step is in the community’s hands. 

“It’s clear there’s still a lot of pain,” Greer said. “The unity statement was the first step. Now we really need the community, and especially those community members in that advisory group, to live that (statement) every day and start helping in that healing process.”

Reach Joe Garofoli: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @joegarofoli