Israel, Hamas agree on ceasefire, community hopes for peace
On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas launched an attack on Israel, killing more than 1,200 people, including 695 civilians and taking 251 people hostage. In response, the Israeli government imposed a full siege on the Gaza Strip two days later, cutting off all supplies including food, water and electricity. Since then, 1.9 million have been displaced, and over 46,000 Palestinians have been killed.
Starrs Mill High School graduate Lyla Caplan was in Israel for a study abroad program. The trip was originally planned until December 2023, but was cut down to six weeks after the events of Oct. 7.
“On October 7th, I woke up in a hotel in Jerusalem at 6:50 a.m. to loud explosions, sirens and counselors screaming and banging on our doors, telling us to run to the bomb shelter,” Caplan said. “I didn’t understand what was happening but started running barefoot in my pajamas from the fourth floor past the lobby and a parking garage down to the fifth floor.”
Upper St. Clair High School junior Kurt Baran was also enrolled in a study abroad program initially planned for August to December 2023 in Israel. He reflected on the stark contrast between the celebrations of Oct. 6 and the events on Oct. 7.
“It was surreal because the night before we were celebrating Simchat Torah,” Baran said. “Everyone was dancing and celebrating. In my pajamas, I woke up to an alarm blaring. We’re in the city; so, I just assumed it was an ambulance. Then my counselor rushed into the room and said we had a minute and 30 seconds to get to the nearest bomb shelter. I didn’t even have time to put on shoes or socks. I just had to rush out the door and everyone was running down.”
Caplan said she spent all day going in and out of the bomb shelter, not knowing if it was safe.
“The shelter was dirty and packed with elderly, children, men and students,” Caplan said. “No one said a word for the 10-plus minutes we were down there. I remember looking around trying to find my friends and realizing they were missing. I couldn’t do anything about it because I left my phone in my hotel room. Once we were allowed out of the shelter, we had five minutes to brush our teeth, change and get anything we would need for that day. We had to stay in the lobby just in case we had to go back downstairs. We did that eight more times that day.”
Following Oct. 7, Emory Alumna Maha Abusaleh was unable to reach her family in Gaza because Wi-Fi was cut off. The uncertainty surrounding her family’s safety in Gaza made Abusaleh more anxious.
“It was always a scare every single day, not knowing what kind of news we would get from my aunt; I would only hear from her every few months because of the lack of Wi-Fi,” Abusaleh said. “So, whenever I did hear from her, it would always be a wave of relief, and I would always cry because it was super emotional. But she does stay in touch with her mom and immediate family in Jordan since it’s just easier.”
Baran explained the effect this experience had on his daily life and the difficulties of adjusting back to normalcy.
“It was kinda hard to get back to ordinary life because everything felt so weird,” Baran said. “How do you go from running to a bomb shelter to just doing math homework? It was really hard to get back into a habit and adapt to back-to-school life.”
The long-lasting conflict between Israel and Hamas has had substantial impacts on not only the Middle East, but also communities across the U.S.
Abusaleh shares how restricted movement in Gaza from Israel impacted her family from being able to visit each other.
“Two summers ago, my aunt Hana was finally able to leave Gaza and visit our family in Jordan,” Abusaleh said. “Every single time we went to Jordan to visit, they never allowed her out of Gaza, and it was honestly a game of luck that they allowed her this one time. That was the first time my dad had seen his sister in almost three decades. I’m forever grateful that I got to meet her because after meeting her, I realized that I’m so much like her, even though we’ve never really interacted before that moment outside of phone calls and texts.”
Midtown alum Will Charlop founded the Jewish Canes for Palestine at the University of Miami. He said he has a number of goals that he aims to accomplish with his organization.
“There are three main goals I have with the [Jewish Canes for Palestine],” Charlop said. “First and foremost, I want to raise donations for humanitarian aid for Gaza. Second, I wanted to provide a Jewish cultural and community space on campus where Jewish students are not harassed and degraded for supporting justice and dignity for the Palestinian people. Third, I really want to use our collective voice to help dispel the myths that being pro-Palestinian means being anti-Jewish or that the two cultures are somehow incompatible.”
On October 8, the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta launched an Israel emergency support fundraising campaign and raised $12.5 million. The organization allocated the funds to support humanitarian needs in Israel and send displaced Israeli kids to their Jewish day schools in Atlanta. Global Peoplehood Manager Susie Mackler oversees decisions on funding with a committee of volunteers at the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta, focusing most of her work on their partnership region of Yokneam Meggido.
“The role of the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta is to support Jews in need,” Mackler said. “We feel that the people in Israel are our brothers, our sisters and our friends. Whether they’re in Atlanta or Israel, we feel that our role is to generously provide support to those in need. The Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta was already in place on Oct.7, so we didn’t need to form an organization. We sometimes compare it to a fire station; they don’t work every day, but when they’re needed in times of emergency, they’re always there.”
According to Israeli law, all male and female Israeli citizens and residents are subjected to a military draft. Mackler believes this policy combined with Israel’s small population leads to the conflict having a widespread impact.
“I was in Israel last February with a group from Atlanta, and we got to visit the kibbutzim that had been attacked and the families that had hostages,” Mackler said. “Israel’s a country with only seven million people. Everyone, when they turn 18, male or female, goes to the army. Whether it’s their brother, son, cousin or friend, everyone has been affected by the conflict in some way, and everyone has been touched.”
Abusaleh reflected on how the emotional burden of the conflict constantly disrupted her sense of normalcy.
“I think the hardest thing for me was the dystopian feeling you get when you’re doing your everyday activities in life, especially when I was in school,” Abusaleh said. “We felt this a lot when we would go to class, go about our normal days. The minute we open our phones, we’re the ones who see the news but our peers either have no idea what’s going on or just don’t care to know. So, I think, the hardest thing was just trying to live your normal life, but realizing that you can’t when your own blood is literally being obliterated overseas.”
Since October 2023, there have been several student-led protests at universities across the U.S., including Emory University. Students at Emory were protesting the investment of funds that played a role in the Israeli army. Emory student and protester Daniella Hobbs described the backlash she and other protesters received.
“Even as someone who grew up with relationships with a lot of police officers, this was a very surreal experience,” Hobbs said. “At first, it was just Emory Police blocking the doors, but then more and more police kept coming up through the building and to the protestors outside. They eventually came with pepper spray and rubber bullets and began shooting at the crowd outside. We stood at the wall-to-wall windows chanting and bearing witness to the entire thing.”
In November 2023, Alnoubani held a memorial at Georgia Tech to honor the lives lost in Gaza; she said it was a beautiful, powerful event.
“Everyone was in tears,” Alnoubani said. “Some people, quite literally, sat there for five hours just listening and just taking it in. As you hear the names, just imagining what their lives were like, what they had ahead of them, who they were as a person, all those things. It was just so incredibly emotional but so beautiful in that sense, bringing everyone together and allowing people to feel like that in a communal way, was just so healing.”
Alnoubani believes that the event highlighted the impact the conflict had on families in Gaza.
“The most moving part was when this professor started reading the names,” Alnoubani said. “We would say the name and the age of the victim. It would start from the babies in that family until the young children and then up until the oldest person in that family that died. When he got to the names of children who were 12 or 13 years old, he started crying, and his throat got caught up because he said he felt like he was reading the names of his cousins and his nephews.”
The ceasefire deal was approved on Jan. 17 and went into effect the following Sunday. The deal was originally supposed to be approved on Jan. 16, but following a “last-minute crisis,” the approval was pushed. The continued violence during the delay caused fear and worry among those anxiously waiting for the ceasefire to go into effect.
“Once I realized that the ceasefire was being implemented a few days after the announcement, I felt a deep sense of disillusionment and sadness,” Charlop said. “I could not, and still do not, understand why the bombing had to continue, even after a ceasefire was announced. The fact that so many people in Gaza survived 15 months of genocide only to be murdered in the last few days after the ceasefire was agreed to, is one of the most horrible things I’ve heard of in my life. Still, progress towards a safer and better world for Gaza was made, both when the ceasefire was signed and when it went into effect. Even if it may not feel like it at times, these milestones mean something.”
The current draft of the ceasefire deal is broken up into three phases. In the first phase, Israeli forces will move east, making room for displaced Palestinians in the south to return to the north. It will also allow around 600 trucks to carry humanitarian aid into Gaza daily, including a minimum of 60,000 temporary homes and 200,000 tents to act as temporary homes and neighborhoods to supplement the ones destroyed by the conflict.
“Just within the last few days, they’ve already killed and injured 170 people in the West Bank, so they have already violated the ceasefire,” Alnoubani said. “It’s unfortunate because we want the ceasefire to hold up, we want people to receive aid, and we want people to be able to go back to their homes safely.”
The first phase also includes Hamas releasing 33 hostages, and Israel releasing hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including all women and children under 19. While Caplan said she is excited about a possible end to the fighting, she is worried about the terms of the agreement.
“The concept of the ceasefire agreement is commendable,” Caplan said. “However, I am skeptical about Hamas’s commitment to adhering to it. Furthermore, I also don’t fully agree with all the terms of the ceasefire, which makes it very bittersweet.”
Freshman Ellie Kaiman shared a similar cautious optimism but contemplated the forthcoming challenges.
“This ceasefire is risky, but also probably the only way we could get the hostages back,” Kaiman said. “For me, I think that the ratio of hostages to prisoners is very unbalanced, but the most important thing is making sure that the Oct. 7 massacre never happens again. [Jan. 19], three of the hostages were safely returned home. Although this is the start of the return of all the hostages, there are still 95 hostages being held captive by Hamas. We don’t know how many are dead, and the overall process is very long.”
Following the ceasefire, Jones also felt many emotions. She said she was grateful many hostages could return home but also wary of the future.
“My initial reaction was a mix of emotions,” Jones said. “I felt joy and relief, but also trepidation and anxiety because we know that when dealing with a terrorist organization, anything can go wrong at any moment. I’ve been watching the news and videos of these hostages being released slowly, and I’m just praying and hoping that we make it to the end of the ceasefire agreement and get all of our hostages home.”
Midtown freshman and Muslim Student Association member Taslima Bilal said the agreement would lift some worries off of the people living in Gaza.
“I was really happy about the ceasefire agreement,” Bilal said. “After the agreement was official, I thought to myself, ‘The Palestinians are at ease, and they don’t have to live in fear every single day whether they are going to eat that day, no more dreams crashing down, getting bombed that day, if their family gets bombed and just wondering if they will ever be free.“
Bilal described hearing about the ceasefire for the first time and the emotions that came with it.
“I felt at ease, and I felt like crying,” Bilal said. “I was so happy that the Palestinians can now be free and live comfortably. I read a poem from a Palestinian on Instagram named Hasan Qatrawi. The poem is about how he felt when the ceasefire announcement came out and that he doesn’t know where he will go. He will just run and find a quiet place to weep for a long time. After I read the poem, I also felt like crying for a long time. The Palestinians can rebuild their homes, see their loved ones and lost ones and celebrate with each other.”
Charlop expressed a sense of relief that the conversation on the conflict has started to shift, even though the circumstances that prompted it are tragic.
“It breaks my heart that it took so many people being murdered for this rise and willingness to listen to Palestinian perspectives about their own life experiences to occur,” Charlop said. “I think it’s well that as awareness grows, it becomes less difficult and exhausting to speak about Palestine. In the past, I felt even as a Jewish person whose grandparents extended family were decimated in the Holocaust that I had to always make clear that I would never support that.”
