War of words continues

A ceasefire is in place but armchair experts who have never set foot in the Middle East continue to weigh in, Martin Regg Cohn writes,

Hamdi Ashour’s family business started as a field of fruit trees in Gaza, before his father built up the enterprise that would sustain his loved ones.

After 11 days of violence, all that remains is rubble.

For Ashour, now a GTA resident, news of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is a whisper of relief. But, he says, it doesn’t undo the Israeli airstrike that hit his family’s facility on Eid al-Fitr, one of the holiest days of the year for Muslims. His nephews’ home was also destroyed; they escaped with five minutes warning.

The family business was the “last piece of our father,” who passed away in the 1980s, says Ashour.

“But it hurt more that a big part of my family is now homeless,” he said. “We’re not people that are involved politically. We are trapped with political issues.”

To Ashour, all the ceasefire does is hit pause.

“This will not resolve anything to be honest,” he said. “The true resolution is giving people the freedom of moving around, of having a business, of having an income.”

Gaza has been under Israeli and Egyptian blockade for over a decade, since the militant group Hamas took de facto control of the strip in 2007. A recent United Nations report called the blockade’s impact “debilitating,” causing economic damage of $16.7 billion over the past decade and driving up poverty rates fourfold.

Ashour left Gaza in 1986, and has supported his family financially from Canada as their ability to earn independently dwindled. While the family business previously installed and repaired high voltage electricity towers in towns and cities, it was nearly decimated by the limited power supply from Israel as part of the blockade. The business pivoted to repairing electric motors to try to stay afloat.

For Rabbi Steven Wernick of Toronto’s Beth Tzedec Congregation, the latest ceasefire is personal, too: His daughter lives in Israel, and he says he hopes there is now “space for some new initiatives for longerterm solutions.”

For those solutions to unfold, Hamas must “turn away from terror, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and not have a rocket arsenal,” Wernick said.

He says both sides will need to make painful concessions to achieve real peace, and that there are lessons for Israel, too: “Arab citizens of Israel have been ignored and marginalized for too long,” he said.

For Ashour, displacement of Palestinians from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem set off what Amnesty International called a “chilling pattern of Israeli forces using abusive and wanton force against largely peaceful Palestinian protesters.”

Wernick says Israel has little choice but to respond to rocket fire from Gaza occurring in spite of the blockade, and that the army goes “well beyond what any other nations will do and be considered reasonable” to limit civilian deaths.

But to Ashour, there is “no balance of power at all.”

“They have the Iron Dome,” he said, referring to Israel’s sophisticated air defence system. “What do we have? Nothing.”

For Ashour, hope right now is hard.

“The ability to bring destruction and not ever be questioned, to be responsible for doing this and not make up any of the losses — it is indescribable how it makes me feel,” he said.

Ashour said his frustrations are not about religion, and added he’s appreciated support from his Jewish friends and colleagues in the GTA in recent days.

But Gaza remains a “big jail,” he said, a problem that a ceasefire won’t fix.