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 businesses in Wake County 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.”

Local Palestinian-Americans have been mourning the mass casualties and protesting the Israeli offensive against Hamas since the terrorist group’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel killed 1,200 civilians and soldiers.

The U.S. is among a minority of countries that have declined to sign a United Nations resolution for a cease-fire, as international criticism mounts against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.

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 and other relatives.

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

“It almost seems targeted,” he said.

Gaza has been called a “children’s graveyard” by U.N. officials. 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 crammed 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, which he called part of a genocide.

“I have two cousins that they, and their husband, kids, their daughters’ kids, and they all died,” Salameh, 45, told The News & Observer. “What can you do?”

Whole neighborhoods have been flattened and hospitals inundated in Gaza. Half of the population faces starvation as the year ends, according to the U.N. World Food Programme.

Salameh also closed his business for the first time ever 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.

Salameh said he wasn’t alone – other Arab-owned businesses including Almadina Market and Jerusalem Bakery & Grill near Western Boulevard also closed in solidarity.

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 distant family were killed in the first weeks of the war.

“He was a lawyer, his name is Ahmed Abualhawa,” he said. “He died. His wife, his father and his two brothers, and their kids.”

Khalid said several dozen of his wife’s extended family, the Al-Ghandours, have died since the siege began.

The impact on his father-in-law has been troubling, he said.

“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.”

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 Palestinianes in the Triangle who’ve lost had relatives since October.

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, worrying for his family in the conflict.

Harrowing violence isn’t new to his relatives who live in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the Palestinian territory where Bethlehem and parts of Jerusalem are located.

But an extension of the war in Gaza caused a spike in Israeli settler violence in a decades-long conflict there.

“(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.

The Durham bakery isn’t open on weekdays, and so would have been closed on the day of the cease-fire strike, he said.

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.”