RAMALLAH, West Bank – A Jacksonville restaurant owner is glad to be safe after he and a group of other men from Jacksonville went on a trip to Palestine when the war erupted this weekend.
Ansar Owais and his family run Hala’s Mideast Eatery and Market on the Southside and Mandarin, which have been staple Middle Eastern restaurants for the past 50 years.
Owais and about 12 other men from Jacksonville and Michigan met up in Ramallah, Palestine, and visited the holy sites in the West Bank, near Jerusalem.
But food and friendship turned into fear and fleeing, after Saturday’s attack from Hamas and the counterattack from Israel.
“So we, we were in our hotel room and we heard lots of gunfire at night spattering of gunfire, we heard jets overhead,” Owais said.
Thankfully, this group of Palestinian Americans wasn’t in the crossfire. However, they knew it was time to go.
“So luckily, we made some calls to make sure that the Jordanian border would be open. So, we went over what they call the King Hussein Bridge,” Owais said. “And we waited for five, six hours, with Israeli guards there with big Uzi machine guns, watching us not letting us move. And we were the lucky ones that they treated, okay, because we have American passports.”
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But not all Palestinians have American passports.
“They’re stuck, and they’re stuck with, you know, maybe limited supplies,” Owais said.
The death toll is climbing – with the majority of deaths in the Gaza Strip and in surrounding cities in Israel – but the West Bank isn’t immune. Reuters reports at least 27 Palestinians have been killed in this region since Saturday.
“I feel so bad. They’re, you know, people, they’re just living simple lives are simple people, peaceful people, it’s a Christian and Muslim mix, they all get along really well,” Owais said.
He feels for all the innocent people now caught in the middle of war, the children, the elderly, Christians, Jews, Muslims, all of the people who are currently suffering.
“Thank God for like, you know, the rise of social media people are able to get both sides of the story and see that there really is right and wrong on both sides. And this thing needs to get resolved,” Owais said. “But I think people now these days are getting a lot more both sides of the story than they used to. We’re not just relying on you know, big corporate media anymore. So, we’re able to get local stories like you guys, you know, Facebook, Telegram, TikTok even, you can find a lot of good news to get an angle from both sides.”
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Owais and his friends eventually made it to Jordan. News4JAX talked to him from his hotel there.
Owais said they hope to catch a flight back to the US later this week, knowing the situation will likely get worse.