news-record.com

Isa Zuaiter tried to get his family out of the Gaza Strip and to the United States even before his cousin’s death in the recent Israeli bombing in the Middle East territory.

“We are calling the State Department, we are calling our congressman — they say they have no expedited (immigration) order for Gaza,” said Zuaiter, a Greensboro store owner. “It looks like to me there should be an expedited order. 

“They have no power, no water, no food, no gas,” Zuaiter said. “The situation is very terrifying for them.”

Greensboro residents such as Zuaiter and Samantha Levy look at the bombing from different vantage points.

Since the Israeli campaign on Dec. 27, at least 680 Palestinians have been killed and 3,000 wounded, according to Palestinian medical reports. The Israelis have lost 10 soldiers and three civilians in the fighting. Israelis say the attacks were instigated by Hamas, the Palestinian movement that governs Gaza.

“These rockets get shot up and as soon as they are in the air children in kindergarten (in Israel) know they have 15 seconds to get to the bomb shelter on the other side of the school,” said Levy, a UNC-Chapel Hill senior who returned from a week in Israel on Monday.

This is the life Israelis have grown accustomed to, said Levy, who traveled with a group of college students.

On another trip earlier this decade, “my parents were absolutely terrified while I was there,” Levy said. “I missed a suicide bombing by hours.”

That was her first night in Jerusalem.

“We checked into the hotel and they gathered us all in the hallway and said, 'Everyone, you need to call your parents and tell them you’re OK,’” said Levy, a political science and Middle Eastern studies major.

“The bombing happened across the street from a well-known restaurant called Norman’s ... we were supposed to be going to the restaurant.”

Zuaiter, the convenience store owner, lived 19 years in a settlement camp in Gaza before coming as a college student to the United States in 1972.

While Jan. 1 headlines told of the death of a Hamas leader in one of the Israeli airstrikes, a day earlier less fanfare was given to Zuaiter’s cousin’s death.

“They were leaving the house,” Zuaiter said. “They were evacuating, and in the process, the missile hit her. When I called (their cell phone) ... they told me.

“I say, 'Where are y’all staying?’ They say they are staying in the first floor,” Zuaiter said. “We don’t have basements, we don’t have bunkers.”

Zuaiter was reminded of similar fighting that took place in his boyhood, when his father managed an orange grove for the International Council of Churches.

“I remember bombs coming from everywhere. I remember the blockade and being in a camp for 30 days, for weeks at a time,” he said. “We have curfew. We have one hour to go and get the goods and bread, and if you leave at night, you jeopardize your life.”

Almost nothing could have been worse than Tuesday, he said, when a U.N. school in northern Gaza being used as a shelter was struck.

“They told all the people to seek refuge in the United Nation schools and they hit the school,” Zuaiter said. “If the U.N. safe haven is not safe for the people to hide in, there’s no safe haven.”

Hamas bombing doesn’t kill more people in Israel because no matter where you live you have a bomb shelter, you have a plan, said Levy, who spent a semester there in high school. Unfortunately, she said, Hamas is placing all its military supplies in Palestinian schools and hospitals.

“It’s not to Israel’s advantage to not allow Palestinians to have hospitals, to have schools,” she said.

“But it’s like with Saddam Hussein — what do you do when you have leadership that allows its own people to be the shield?”

Contact Nancy McLaughlin at 373-7049 or nancy.mclaughlin@news-record.com