Thousands Protest in Manhattan Before Netanyahu’s U.N. Speech

NEW YORK — Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of midtown Manhattan on Thursday in protest of Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip and its recent strikes on Lebanon, denouncing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who had arrived in New York before a scheduled Friday address to the U.N. General Assembly.

Several protests overlapped throughout the day, with the largest winding through Manhattan’s streets and stopping traffic. Tensions between police officers and protesters flared after dark on the Upper East Side, where roughly a dozen protesters were arrested over the course of several hours.

The demonstrations, organized by several pro-Palestinian groups including Within Our Lifetime and Jewish Voice for Peace, were peaceful and largely orderly for most of the day but escalated after one group of protesters made its way uptown from Grand Central Terminal.

Outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, police officers on bicycles surrounded a defiant crowd on the sidewalk. On the museum steps, officers held their bicycles in front of them to block the crowd from the front of the building.

After the march moved on to Park Avenue, officers told the protesters to clear the road and began making arrests when they refused.

One woman wearing a black headscarf and a kaffiyeh draped around her shoulders shouted to onlookers and raised one hand, flashing a peace sign before officers in bike helmets bound her wrists with a zip tie.

The group moved downtown from the museum and again tangled with police officers near the Loews Regency hotel, where protest organizers believed Netanyahu might be staying. Police officers detained several more demonstrators there around 9:30 p.m. before the protest dispersed.

The clashes came after a morning demonstration near the United Nations headquarters blocked traffic and resulted in 25 arrests, according to police. Video posted to social media by Jewish Voice for Peace showed a line of protesters blocking traffic emerging from the First Avenue Tunnel at 48th Street.

In the afternoon, thousands of protesters gathered on the steps of the New York Public Library’s main location at Bryant Park. Several speakers addressed the crowd, including Jill Stein, the Green Party’s presidential candidate, who criticized both Democrats and Republicans for their response to the war in Gaza.

Karen Frost-Arnold, 47, a professor of philosophy, had traveled to Manhattan from Geneva, New York, to take part in the afternoon march. Frost-Arnold said she had wanted to travel to Washington to protest Netanyahu’s address to Congress in July but had not been able to make the trip.

“I’ve been looking for a chance to come and let him know that what he’s doing is reprehensible,” Frost-Arnold said.

Manny Perez, 37, joined the march after work to protest Netanyahu’s visit and “the way he’s allowed to walk free and come to the United Nations,” he said.

As the crowd began to march, chanting to the beat of a drum line, a modest line of police officers in helmets and visors stood on the edge of Fifth Avenue, containing the protesters on the sidewalk and allowing traffic to pass. The demonstration took a lap around midtown, stopping at the security perimeter surrounding the United Nations headquarters before moving west to Eighth Avenue and concluding at Times Square.

That protest remained peaceful and dispersed shortly after 6 p.m.

There have been numerous protests in New York City since the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, which officials say killed 1,200 Israelis. The Israel-Hamas war since has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials.

The number of pro-Palestinian demonstrations in New York swelled in the spring, when college students across the country erected encampments and called for their administrations to divest from Israeli-linked assets. Some of those led to clashes with counterprotesters and police, and to mass arrests.

Many demonstrators Thursday said that Israel’s recent strikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, which have killed hundreds of people and displaced hundreds of thousands more, had reinforced the urgency of their cause.

Despite efforts by the United States and several other nations to broker a three-week cease-fire to stop the violence between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia based in Lebanon, Netanyahu said Thursday that Israeli strikes would continue. He later said in a statement that Israeli officials would continue discussing the U.S. initiative in the coming days.

Before the arrests began Thursday evening, people blocked traffic for several blocks at a time, following group leaders holding banners, playing drums and shouting call-and-response chants. A group of around 40 police officers wearing helmets and visors brought up the rear of the march.

Huwaida Hassan, 42, of Union City, New Jersey, said she felt that a “forced calm” had presided over the protest. Like many demonstrators, she said, she could not afford to get arrested — her children expected her home for dinner.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .