Months into war, Palestinians in NC hang onto hope for their families, people in Gaza

For the first time since he opened in 2011, Taher Abualhawa voluntarily chose not to open the doors of his casual Mediterranean restaurant in Cary earlier this month.

There was no fluffy pita, tangy hummus, or savory chicken shawarma served at Baba Ghannouj Mediterranean Bistro on the second Monday of December.

Instead, a “Ceasefire Now” sign was taped to the door.

“If we can deliver only one message and one message only, [it] is the cease-fire,” said Abualhawa, 54. “We want the killing of the kids to end.”

Baba Ghannouj was one of several Wake County businesses that closed Dec. 11 as part of an international strike calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

“We’re doing what we can,” said Abualhawa’s 27-year-old son, Khalid. “Our hands are tied behind our backs.”

WHAT HAPPENED ON OCT. 7? Local Palestinian-Americans have been mourning the mass casualties and protesting the Israeli offensive since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel killed 1,200 civilians and soldiers and took over 200 people hostage. There are still about 120 people held hostage by Hamas, though at least 21 are believed to be dead.

The U.S. is among a minority of countries that have declined to sign a United Nations resolution calling for a cease-fire, as international criticism mounts against the Israeli bombardment. Almost all of Gaza’s residents have been displaced and over 20,000 people have been killed, about two-thirds of them women and children. They include several members of the Abualhawas’ extended family.

“At what point have the U.S. government and the Israeli government killed enough children?” Khalid asked, sitting in Baba Ghannouj alongside his father and younger brother, Hamza.

“It almost seems targeted,” he said.

WHAT’S HAPPENING NOW: After the October attack, the Israeli government vowed to eliminate Hamas, the Islamist government of the Gaza Strip.

Since then, Gaza has become a “children’s graveyard” U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said last month. Women and children make up an estimated 70% of those killed, or about 14,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Another 50,000 people in Gaza have been wounded. The numbers do not account for the missing.

“People died on the Israeli side, some of them civilians, which really should not have happened, [and] everybody condemned their deaths,” Taher Abualhawa said in a Dec. 13 interview. “Imagine: 18,000 people dying from the Gaza side, and Mr. Biden is still thinking about [whether to call for] a cease-fire or not, or even doing anything to stop the war.”

Gaza family members dead

The war has devastated the densely populated Gaza Strip, where 2.3 million people live on land just seven miles wide and 25 miles long, closed off by Israel since 2005 on its eastern border and by Egypt on its border to the south.

Mohamed Salameh, the owner of Mecca Market, an Arab grocery store on Western Boulevard in Raleigh, once called Gaza home and has lived in North Carolina for 25 years.

Salameh said he has lost at least 15 family members in the bombings. He calls it genocide, echoing protesters around the U.S.

“I have two cousins ... they, and their husbands, kids, their daughters’ kids, they all died,” Salameh, 45, said. “What can you do?”

Whole neighborhoods have been flattened and hospitals inundated. Half the population faces starvation, according to the U.N. World Food Programme.

Salameh also closed his business on Dec. 11.

“It was a good thing that you support your family and your community and your country, your people, your religion,” he said.

Other Arab-owned businesses including Almadina Market and Jerusalem Bakery & Grill near Western Boulevard also closed in solidarity, he said.

Emergency aid has struggled to enter Gaza and what has come is not enough, international media outlets report.

Through social media, the Abualhawas learned at least 10 members of their extended family were killed in the first weeks of the war.

One of them was a cousin, Taher said. “He was a lawyer; his name is Ahmed Abualhawa. He died. His wife, his father and his two brothers, and their kids.”

Khalid said 77 members of his wife’s extended family in Gaza, the Al-Ghandours, have died since the siege began.

His father-in-law struggles to leave the house, except for work.

“He’s not the same man that he was,” said Khalid. “All day and every day, he’s constantly sitting, waiting for a phone call, from his sister or his brother that either they’re alive, or somebody else saying they’re not. That’s no way to live.”

Khalid said the Palestinian death toll stands in sharp contrast to fewer than a thousand children killed in the Russia-Ukraine War, which began in 2022.

Theirs is not the only affected family, said the Abualhawas, who know other Palestinians in the Triangle who’ve lost relatives in the Israeli strikes since October.

“Any given day, your parents, your siblings, your cousins could be killed,” he said. “Could you go on and live a normal life? You can’t.”

Jamil Kadoura, a local Palestinian-American who owns the popular Mediterranean Deli in Chapel Hill, initially agreed to be interviewed for this story, but later declined because speaking about the topic is too painful for him, he said.

‘There is still humanity in the world’

Books on the history of the Palestinians are laid out for customers to read at La Recette Patisserie, a French bakery and coffee shop in Durham.

Fadi Ghanayem and his wife, Djamila Bakhour, opened last year to strong local support, in particular from the Arab and Muslim communities.

“We made it very clear from the beginning that this is where we stand,” said Bakhour, who is Algerian. “This is also a space to have a voice for other people around us. We also have a really good connection with our Jewish friends.”

Ghanayem, who is Palestinian-American, became depressed when the war broke out, worried for relatives who live in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the Palestinian territory where Bethlehem and parts of Jerusalem are located.

The war in Gaza has caused a spike in Israeli settler violence in the territory.

“(My family) is trying to stay in their village and not leave, to not see a lot of the conflict, and not put themselves in harm’s way,” said Ghanayem, 38. “For the time being, they’re safe, but we’ll see what happens when living in the unknown.”

Over 300 Palestinians, including children, have been killed there since Oct. 7 from Israeli raids and strikes, media outlets report.

Kind words from customers who’ve asked about him have been a respite in his grief and sadness, said Ghanayem.

“Words as simple as ‘I’m sorry,’ it makes you feel better,” he said. “You feel that there is still humanity in the world.”