“We need to talk ...”
This was how my good friend woke me up in his home in Nazareth on October 7th, the day Hamas attacked Israel in one of its worst onslaughts in history.
My friend and I had met in Rio de Janeiro six months previously, at the rooftop bar of our hostel. When he told me he was Palestinian, I was immediately curious, and he warmed to me as soon as he heard I was Irish.
Ireland is regarded as being supportive of Palestine, and in a world where being Palestinian is frequently and mistakenly conflated with being on the side of Hamas (a group responsible for many deadly attacks on civilians and Israeli soldiers, and which has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007), he was keen to talk about the nuance and complexity of his life in Israel and the Occupied Territories (the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip).
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As part of my trip around the world, after completing six months in South America, I decided to travel to the Middle East and North Africa before heading to Nepal and India.
I texted my friend, who kindly offered to host me in Tel Aviv, where he was working, and to take me up to Nazareth to stay with his family.
I arrived on a sunny Tuesday morning and we went out for coffee and made plans for my stay. In the following days we wandered around the city, went to the beach, and then headed up to Nazareth on Friday evening.
On Saturday morning, I woke to find my friend’s family gathered around the television, switching between the news in Hebrew and Arabic to try to gather a full picture of what exactly had happened.
This was how my good friend woke me up in his home in Nazareth on October 7th, the day of the significant missile attack on Israel when sections of the wall that separated the Gaza Strip from Israel were destroyed. Hamas fighters had then entered the country, armed.
“Rocket attacks happen every few years,” he told me, calmly, “but the rockets don’t usually reach Tel Aviv,” he added, as an afterthought.
There had been a rocket attack on the street where one of the restaurants we had brunch in two days before was located, and I was stunned to see images of the debris and destruction. I had taken pictures there.
My friend’s mother was, understandably, very shaken. She told me about how much it reminded her of past conflicts, when my friend and his sister were only children.
“We can’t keep living like this,” she told me. “I told my husband that if there’s another war then I am leaving this country. I don’t want to leave, my friends are here, my family is here, but I can’t go through another war. I just can’t.”
We sat and watched the news for a few hours while I tried to gauge the severity of what was happening. Given that Nazareth is quite a distance from Gaza, it was out of range of the rockets – unless Hizbullah joined the fight and started attacking from southern Lebanon, my friend mentioned casually. That was another level of complexity I hadn’t even considered. With nothing else to do but wait, we went out and wandered around Nazareth’s famous churches and met up with friends.
Nazareth has Israel’s largest Arab population and I asked some of the people I had met how they felt about the attacks. They didn’t agree with any violence, they told me, but it was hardly surprising it was happening.
I was embarrassed to admit I hadn’t realised the differences in the rights experienced by the different Palestinian populations across the region.
People in Gaza often experience electricity blackouts and do not have access to clean drinking water and there are a number of controls on goods imported into the area, including food and medical supplies. With about 2.3 million people, it is one of the most densely populated areas on earth and has been likened to an open-air prison.
After two nights in Nazareth, we decided to return to Tel Aviv, where I could fly out of the country earlier than planned.
I asked my friend if his mother was worried about him returning to Tel Aviv from the relative safety of Nazareth. He told me she wasn’t as worried about the rockets, as they could come from the north too at this point. However, what she was worried about was anti-Palestinian aggression on the streets of Tel Aviv. If it wasn’t stressful enough to be constantly on alert for air-raid sirens and always in proximity of a nearby bomb shelter, my friend also had to be careful about what he said when out and about, in which language, and to whom.
It was exhausting.
My friend and his family showed me nothing but kindness and generosity in the time I stayed with them, despite the immense shock of the conflict. On the day we woke up to the attacks, they were surprised by my calmness as a tourist waking up in a war zone. But in my mind, it was much more terrifying for them, facing an uncertain future in their home.
As the airport and borders remained open, I knew I could return to the relative safety of Dublin if I needed to. My friend, however, is trapped in limbo. Only time will tell how this conflict will end, and whether there will ever be any kind of solution for the millions of displaced people. I can’t help but feel deeply sad in leaving what has been the most surreal, yet morbidly memorable, part of my trip so far.
- Pauline Carney is from Dublin. She left in March 2023 to travel the world, but before that was working in communications in The Hague in the Netherlands. Carney was in Nazareth in northern Israel on the day Hamas attacked an all-night rave in the south of the country. She left Israel on October 10th and is currently in Cairo in Egypt.
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