Four Springs residents thankful for cease-fire in Gaza
Hussein AbuKhdeir recalls the day well, when as a child his family evacuated from Jerusalem during the Six-Day War.
Along with many of their neighbors, the family fled into the hills above the city as Israeli forces battled with Palestinian Arabs.
That was 1967.
Forty-five years later, blood is still flowing in Israel and the Gaza Strip.
Over the past 10 days — while Hamas was firing rockets at Israel and Israel was returning fire — the Colorado Springs resident thought back to his family’s flight into the hills and about the impending fate of his brothers, sisters and cousins who remain in Palestine.
“They’ll be OK,” AbuKhdeir said. “They’re used to it.”
He made the comments Tuesday, a day before a cease-fire was announced, by which time five Israelis and more than 140 Palestinians had died. Hamas had fired roughly 1,000 rockets at Israel, which had retaliated with 1,500 air strikes.
A U.S. citizen who’s lived in Colorado Springs since 2005, AbuKhdeir served 25 years in the U.S. Air Force. He now owns the Heart of Jerusalem Cafe.
When asked about Gaza and the West Bank — both Palestinian territories separated by the Jewish state — AbuKhdeir says his brethren are stepped on and spat upon by the Israelis. The recent attacks from Hamas were inevitable, he said.
“They don’t just fire a rocket to start a war,” AbuKhdeir said. “When you take the freedom and dignity of a person, what do you think he’ll do?
“They have no life, no dignity, no schools, nothing.”
Rabbi Mel Glazer, who leads Colorado Springs’ Temple Shalom, disagrees.
“Lots of people in this country like to equalize things — ‘Oh, Israel is guilty, just like Hamas is,’” Glazer said. “It is not. Israel didn’t start lobbing rockets into Gaza. Gaza started lobbing rockets into Israel.”
The rabbi points out that Israeli forces dropped warning notes above Gaza City before a strike Tuesday.
“Israel’s military is the most ethical in the world,” Glazer said. “What other army is going to fly over a town and drop leaflets warning people to get out of a town because it’s going to be bombed?”
Glazer maintains his “heart lives in Jerusalem” and, like AbuKhdeir, prays for a two-state solution to the decades-long strife.
While Kamel Elwazeir, a Palestinian, admits that both sides want peace, he sees the recent clash as evidence of a sizable gap in relations.
Elwazeir, 36, is a board member of the Islamic Society of Colorado Springs. He was born and raised in Qatar, a small Arab nation on the eastern border of Saudi Arabia, but he’s been in the U.S. since 1999 and is an American citizen. Elwazeir has 40 family members in Gaza, a place he refers to as “a big prison.”
“People living there have no infrastructure, no electricity,” he said. “Power comes only one hour per day. There’s no hot water in winter. Propane tanks cost $80 to fill. Salt water was coming out of the taps. A pound of lamb is more than $25.”
So, according to Elwazeir, the conflict was inevitable. And it will likely come again.
“What are people supposed to do — just wait for God to start sending food and electricity and water down from heaven,” he said. “It’s not going to happen.”
Ellen Levy, a retired 65-year-old Jewish social worker in Colorado Springs, doesn’t doubt that the recent violence is part a larger picture. Levy visited Israel on her honeymoon in the late 1970s and said it used to be a beautiful place.
A good step toward peace, Levy said, would be if Hamas was replaced by a more moderate Palestinian government.
All four Springs residents are hoping the cease-fire will be the start of a long-term peace, and possibly a two-state solution. Glazer said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s willingness to compromise is reason for hope.
“He’s taking a deep breath, and realizing that this could be the beginning of the beginning, and not the beginning of the end,” he said.
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An Israeli soldier guides a tank to a new position at a staging area near the Israel Gaza Strip Border, southern Israel, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2012. A cease-fire agreement between Israel and the Gaza Strip’s Hamas rulers took effect Wednesday night, bringing an end to eight days of the fiercest fighting in years and possibly signaling a new era of relations between the bitter enemies. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis) Photo by STF