In Washington, D.C., a group of state lawmakers, Palestinian rights advocates and supporters have launched a hunger strike demanding a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. On Monday, they gathered outside the White House for the five-day peaceful action. This is Rana Abdelhamid, a former candidate for Congress and an Egyptian American community organizer from Queens, New York.

Rana Abdelhamid: “Over the past couple of weeks, we have seen an incredibly harmful uptick in violence, impacting across all of our communities. When we normalize the deaths and murder of Palestinian people vis-à-vis our foreign policy, we normalize death and violence here in the United States across all of our communities. We need to understand that violence only allows for more violence. What we need is negotiation. What we need is diplomacy. What we need is human rights and for all families to be able to be safe, to return safely, to not have to endure more bombing, more violence and more destruction.”

Activist and actor Cynthia Nixon, best known for her role in “Sex and the City,” is among those who joined the hunger strike. Nixon, a former candidate for New York governor, also spoke Monday.

Cynthia Nixon: “We are hunger-striking as a way of amplifying that, yes, that Palestinians are being bombed and killed, but they’re also being starved, and so many of them are on the brink of starvation.”