'Peace is very far': How the Israel-Hamas war is changing people on both sides of the conflict
Susan Ormiston | CBC News | Posted: November 9, 2023 9:32 PM | Last Updated: November 9, 2023
Fragile ties between Israelis and Palestinians are being tested amid the fighting
The Hamas attacks on Israelis and the bombardment of Gaza are hardening hearts and severing fragile ties between Israelis and Palestinians, making any road to peace far longer, tougher, and perhaps impossible, according to people trying to get on with their lives amid the war.
"What's changed for me is in the mind," said Josef Mizrahi, a shop owner selling nuts and dates in the Mehane Yehuda market in Jerusalem, a divided city with a both Palestinian and Jewish residents.
"It's not that I don't want from the seventh of October to live in peace with the Palestinians, but it's become very far for us."
A week ago, Mizrahi met with other Jewish and Arab community members in Abu Gosh, an Arab town just west of Jerusalem. They spoke about what will come the day after the war ends.
People on both sides of the conflict, now entering its second month, agree it will lead to profound shifts in attitudes, and how Israelis and Palestinians perceive their future and each other.
"They are a little bit frightened," he said. "We live as good neighbours and we share friendship — but Hamas, they don't care even about their own civilians, so now it's very difficult to continue with the peace process."
'All the wishes, all the dreams broke at once'
The Mizrahi family started their business in the market in 1964. Yosef, 63, is the second generation to run it; he is soft spoken and thoughtful.
"From the seventh of October, all the dreams, all the wishes broke at once," he said.
"I'm sad because I don't … I can't see the future for my children and for my grandchild."
An attack by Hamas through the border towns, a music festival and kibbutz in southern Israel on Oct. 7, prompted a massive military response from Israel. More than 1,400 people have died in Israel since the start of the war, mainly during Hamas's initial attack, according to the country's government
Airstrikes are now raining down in Gaza. More than 10,800 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.
The Israeli government has warned the war in Gaza will be long and even more deadly. It won't end, according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, until the military has reached its goal to "destroy Hamas."
"This is a destructive war," said Nuha Awad, a 78-year-old Palestinian Christian living in Biet Sahour, near Bethlehem. She is a member of a longstanding family in Gaza, where she was born.
"They will demolish Gaza. It's as if they don't want any people there at all, which is not easy for us," she said, speaking to CBC from her terrace overlooking Biet Sahour, a town near Bethlehem.
On Oct. 19, some of Awad's family members fled their homes in Gaza City as Israeli airstrikes drew closer, she said.
They divided up and sheltered in two churches — one the Greek Orthodox Saint Porphyrius Church, built in 1150, the oldest church that was still in use in Gaza, the other the Holy Family Church, the only Catholic church in Gaza.
"Everybody told her, 'You have to leave this house and go to the church.'"
But an Israeli airstrike that landed nearby collapsed part of the Greek Orthodox church. At least 16 people were killed. Helen Tarazi, 80, was one of them.
"They found my sister [under the rubble] after four hours," Awad said. "She died."
Awad tried but could not enter Gaza for the funeral.
The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have said the strikes were targeting a Hamas command centre next to the church.
"I still have faith, and believe that God will not leave us alone. But it seems that nothing will come [be] better," Awad said.
A future no one can define
In over a month of war, Palestinians and Jews are desperately trying to predict a future that no one can define.
Rockets fired from Gaza, and now from Lebanon, still set off sirens in much of Israel but most are intercepted by the Iron Dome.
WATCH l Life in modern-day Jerusalem:
With the onset of another brutal war, Jerusalem is on edge. Security has been tightened and many of its residents worried about the backlash from the war.
In East Jerusalem last Monday, a 16-year-old Palestinian stabbed a police officer near the 'Flower Gate' to the Old City, say police. The officer died of her wounds. A week before, another teenager stabbed an officer in East Jerusalem before being shot dead by police.
Two blocks from there, on Salah Ad-din street, Muhannad "Mo" Tahhan runs a cafe Sarwa Street Kitchen, which is popular with locals and tourists. After struggling through COVID-19 closures, business was returning. Bookings stretched through to next spring. Then Oct. 7 happened.
"Everybody cancelled," he told CBC, sipping coffee in his empty cafe.
"Jerusalem with no tourists, it's like a tree without leaves, you know."
Tourism has collapsed in Jerusalem, particularly in the Old City, with few flights into Israel, and the deep uncertainty around the war.
Becoming wary of each other
Tahhan's father started a travel business on this corner in East Jerusalem in the 1960s. He is Palestinian and also has U.S. citizenship. For the first time, he said, he carries his American passport with him everywhere as a safeguard.
"Usually when police stop you, you know, you can give them the American passport; they don't give you any hard time anymore," he said.
He's urging his son to do the same. "I told him … it's much, much safer for you."
Palestinians and Jews both claim Jerusalem and with the war raging in Gaza, members of both communities are becoming more wary of each other.
"Everybody is just like trying to avoid each other for a little bit," said Tahhan. "You know, not to go to their side; they don't come to our side, in a way to make things not too tense.
"I feel the tension because what happened is not easy, you know, on both sides."
For young Israeli Jews, this war will define their generation.
"I have a friend that was murdered in the party. I have another friend that has been kidnapped," said Rotem Yohanan, 36, who works in Tel Aviv. The Israeli government says more than 240 people were seized and are held by Hamas and other groups inside Gaza.
Many young Israelis are conscripted to the war, and like Yohanan, many know someone who was at the music festival on Oct. 7, when it was attacked by Hamas militants.
'I feel this time this is the real terror'
"I did believe in the option to have some kind of peace. I haven't dropped the idea," said Yohanan. "But now it seems more difficult to do that. And it's very depressing because there is no solution as we see it."
She and her friend Jonathan Belichat, 34, say the war has changed their perception of security inside Israel and outside.
"I never thought it would happen to me," said Yohanan. "I feel that this is the real terror, because they [Hamas] see this fear in us that we didn't have before. And I'm trying to fight it."
From inside Israel, Belichat is following the dangerous rise of antisemitism across the world, including the molotov cocktail thrown at the Montreal synagogue.
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"I'm originally from Paris. My family took off their family names from their letterbox."
"I'm never ashamed of being Israeli or Jewish. Then why now? I need to be scared of showing something like this?" he said.
"Everyone's lives changed and we're trying to explain to ourselves how could this happen, and we're also grieving," he said.
As Israel pushes deeper into Gaza, trying to rout out Hamas, the divisions are growing deeper on many levels, they say.
"I've lost a few friends," said Yohanan. "Not that they were killed, but friends that I had from Canada and from France that just decided to take a side without talking to me about it," another painful loss from this war, she said.