About 100 protesters gathered at Center City for a pro-Palestine rally on Thursday evening.
The rally took place at City Hall at the corner of 15th and Market Streets.
Participants of the rally are being described as mostly local health care workers under the "Shut Down! For Palestine" campaign.
“We are calling for movements, trade unions, youth, students, media and healthcare workers, and all members of society to increase the pressure with more marches, walk-outs, sit-ins, strikes, and other forms of direct action directed at the political offices, businesses, and workplaces that fund, invest in, and collaborate with Israeli genocide and occupation," the campaign website says.
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Skyforce10 was over the scene around 4:30 p.m. where people could be seen holding signs and flags. At one point during the rally, protesters could be seen lying down on the ground for 15 minutes.
Tamim Khaddish, a Palestinian-American and a physician in the city, said that the images of injured and deceased Palestinian children compelled him to take a stand—or in this case, lie down.
“I think one of the stories that we’re not hearing enough of, coming out of Gaza, is about the resources the healthcare workers are allowed to get and what they aren’t allowed to get,” one protester, who did not want to be identified, told NBC10. “And they’re doing the best they can with very limited resources with no electricity and no water. And there doesn’t seem to be any support from these large institutions going abroad into Gaza to financially support these institutions as much as it is going into Israel.”
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The protest took place just hours after the U.S. announced that Israel has agreed to daily four hour pauses in fighting in Gaza.
“Bombing 20 hours a day is better than bombing 24 hours a day. But we don’t accept that that’s any kind of true solution. We believe that the bombing has to stop, that the siege on Gaza has to stop and that the occupation has to stop entirely," Timour Kamran from Answer Coalition said.
Many of the health care workers told NBC10's Brian Sheehan they'll keep protesting until Israel agrees to a ceasefire.
The last time there was a rally calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, dozens were arrested. That protest had people gathering outside of Philadelphia's 30th Street Station last week.
The group was made up of faith leaders as well as members of the groups Jewish Voice for Peace-Philadelphia, the Philly Palestine Coalition and IfNotNow Philadelphia.
Protest organizers had described the demonstration as “the biggest interfaith action for a ceasefire since the recent humanitarian crisis began.”
Protests around the world have occurred in the aftermath of Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and the Israel-Hamas War that followed.
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