The US Capitol police have clashed with the peaceful protesters voicing support for the Palestinians under Israeli killing campaign.

The protest was organized by three advocacy groups and held in an area near the US Capitol in Washington on Wednesday night to urge lawmakers for a ceasefire in Palestine and an end to the brutal Israeli military campaign in the Gaza Strip.

Several advocacy groups, including IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace Action, claimed on X platform (formerly known as Twitter) that they were “assaulted.”

“We were peacefully linking arms, singing, and calling for a ceasefire,” IfNotNow posted. “Then Capitol Police rushed in, threw us down the stairs, and pepper sprayed us.”

The organizers rejected allegations that demonstrators were violent.

Photos posted on social media showed protesters wearing black T-shirts stenciled with “Cease Fire Now” in white letters struggling with police officers trying to pull them away from the building’s entrance.

Jewish Voice for Peace Action said that the initial plan was to lay out 11,000 candles, representing the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli airstrikes but the police interrupted with violence and used pepper spray on some protesters and pushed the group back to about a block away from the DNC.
 
IfNotNow spokesperson, Eva Borgwardt, said in a statement that the protest was “nonviolent” and a “moral act of civil disobedience to call on Democrats to support a cease-fire and an end to our government’s funding of violence against Palestinian civilians by Netanyahu’s far-right government.”

Police escorted legislators who were at the DNC offices at the time and evacuated them from the area.

In a post on X, the US Capitol police put the number of protestors at around 150, claiming that they were "illegally and violently protesting" near the party offices. 

It also said one person had been arrested over alledged "assault on an officer."