Two University of Tampa students spent their winter breaks inside a pair of war-torn nations, with one spending a week in Israel and the other living in Ramallah, Palestine.
Tampa remained a peaceful place, but war raged near the hometown of sophomore Yara Abbas. Sarah Gottlieb, The Minaret’s assistant news editor, traveled from New York to Israel for her Birthright trip. Abbas, a native of Palestine, grew up just miles away from the recurrent violence in the Gaza Strip.
‘For New Years, people around the world celebrated,’ she said. ‘My friends and I went to the downtown of Ramallah to protest against what the Israeli army is doing.’
For the past few weeks, tensions have risen as Israeli armed forces have launched military operations into the West Bank in response to rocket attacks fired from Hamas-controlled territories.
Estimates vary, and propaganda makes it difficult to ascertain the truth. Some reports say Hamas launches 80 rockets into Israeli territory a day, but Palestinians assert that more than a thousand civilians have been left dead by Israeli strikes.
Abbas, a Minaret office assistant, uses her Facebook status to update friends on the latest happenings in her country. The most recent update reports 984 Palestinian deaths and over 4,000 casualties.
‘It’s like Palestinians are not humans and don’t deserve human rights, or Israel is divine and gets to do what it wants,’ she said. ‘By trying to eliminate ‘terrorists’ they are creating new ‘terrorists.’ To resolve this there need to be a just two state solution which is what the Palestinian government has been calling for.’
Daily life was difficult for Abbas during her month-long break.
‘All everyone does is watch the news and try to donate blood and food and more,’ she said. ‘But still in Gaza the hospitals are running out of places for the wounded, there is no gas to keep the houses warm and for cooking that people are looking for wood so they can cook.’
On the other side of the conflict is Gottlieb. She just returned from Israel, where she traveled to take advantage of her birthright trip. All people of Jewish origin are afforded a free trip to Israel to learn of their history and heritage.
She spent a week with 29 Americans and seven Israeli soldiers. She toured the country and got first-hand insight into the conflict.
‘Hamas hides behind civilians,’ she wrote. ‘It uses them as shields.’ In the U.S., when we hear that 50 civilians were killed, it doesn’t always mean 50 innocent people.’
Hamas wears no uniform, and stands out no differently than innocent people on a crowded street.’
For Abbas, though, the simplest parts of life were most difficult.
‘Even bakeries for bread, there’s less than 20 open for 1.5 million people because of the lack of flour and gas due to Israel stopping it from entering,’ she said. ‘That’s unbelievable!! There are many people living without electricity or clean water because Israel bombed the supply.’
Some justify the attacks as unfortunate side effects from trying to stop the Hamas rockets. They say Israel must cut the Hamas supply lines and undermine its authority, but others worry the actions make Hamas’ aid to civilians all the more important, and future fighters all the more resolute.
The Minaret realizes this is a difficult subject which has many different sides. We encourage productive conversation on our Web site, but commenters must refrain from personal and offbase attacks.
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