Gaza ceasefire brings bittersweet relief to Texans with ties to the war-torn region

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At a crowded park north of Austin on Saturday, a small group mingled and picked at a menagerie of snacks and desserts on a table. With a Palestinian flag whipping in the winter breeze and traditional dabke music blaring from a speaker, an air of cautious optimism hung over conversation at what one of the gatherers called “not quite a celebration.”

The Austin-area group, an informal set of families who attend the same mosque, convened Saturday to commemorate the Jan. 15 ceasefire announcement between Israel and Hamas, a relief those at the gathering felt was months overdue.

Although thousands of miles away, the ceasefire and the war preceding it has had a profound impact on Texans with cultural and familial connections to the region, both emotionally and politically.

Twelve hours away from the official start of the ceasefire deal on Sunday, Leander resident Ayman Alafifi felt the news was as consoling as it was distressing. History had taught him and his family in Gaza that the worst was yet to come.

“It's unfortunately not our first rodeo with something like that,” Alafifi said. “Unfortunately, it comes with more fear because in their experience, every time something like this is announced, the days — especially the hours before it becomes a reality — they know that the the conflict gets escalated drastically.”

The day after Alafifi heard the ceasefire news, he received an update, this time from his family: his cousin, Waleed Azzam, and two of his friends were among 80 people killed during a series of bombings after the ceasefire’s announcement. Azzam had postponed traveling through security checkpoints to meet with his mother and daughter in southern Gaza for over a year out of fear of being detained by Israeli authorities, but the announcement of a ceasefire brought brief hope they could reunite.

Still, Alafifi attended the gathering with his family with the same mixed emotions as other attendees. Despite a momentary delay, the three-phase ceasefire has held since its start Sunday, which included the first exchange of three female Israeli hostages and 90 Palestinian prisoners.

Hostilities in the region exploded on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, in which militants killed more than 1,200 adults and children and took more than 240 hostages into Gaza. What followed was a formal declaration of war by Israel on Hamas and a 15-month siege on the region by its military, triggering a humanitarian crisis as aid was blocked to civilians trapped by the fighting. Reports vary, but the death toll in Gaza during the first nine months of the war could be anywhere from 34,000 to more than 60,000 people, most of whom are women, children and the elderly, according to a research group in London.

Another attendee at the Saturday gathering, Austin-based pediatrician Dr. Aman Odeh, said she can’t stop thinking of the children in Gaza — especially the infants she saw while at a hospital’s neonatal unit in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city. Odeh was placed there for two weeks in March with a Canadian-based health group providing medical aid. Even before arriving, Odeh knew the situation was dire, as she and the team packed light to make room for crucial medical supplies.

“We filled our suitcases with anything we could: medicine, antibiotics, anything,” Odeh said.

On the way to the hospital in Rafah, Odeh said they passed dozens of aid trucks with supplies, but in the hospital itself, conditions were abhorrent: even hand sanitizer was “hit or miss,” Odeh said. After Odeh returned from her service in Rafah, she said she could barely digest the horrible conditions the Palestinian people were being subjected to, but that the vocal support from Americans — especially students — was relieving.

“The best thing that happened to us was the student protests,” Odeh said.

Protests across Texas condemning Israel — and in some cases praising Hamas — sparked controversy and swift police response, the largest of which was in Austin, where more than 30 demonstrators were arrested on the University of Texas campus.

But while protests spearheaded by groups usually advocating for LGBTQ+ rights or racial justice were seen as acts of solidarity by Odeh and others, they came as an unwelcome betrayal for some pro-Israeli Texans.

Chen Dori-Roberts, who lives in Austin but has family in Israel, lost several relatives during the Oct. 7 attack. His aunt was killed by friendly Israeli helicopter fire during the fighting, and her stepson was killed trying to defend his home from Hamas soldiers.

“I, all of a sudden, was very turned off by a lot of my people that I voted for and supported all these years,” Dori-Roberts said. “The LGBTQ+ community, the Black Lives Matter people, not even the far left but just liberals, and all kinds of those people in the street, protesting, marching.”

Dori-Roberts’ cousin and her two young children, ages 2 and 4, also were among the hostages taken by Hamas, and were some of the first returned in November 2023. But in the year since Oct. 7, Dori-Roberts said he has felt alienated from people and politicians he typically aligned with, especially when large-scale pro-Palestinian protests began to spring up in Texas and across the country.

The public outcry against the protests from conservatives only added confusion for Dori-Roberts. The self-described moderate liberal and Democrat described the war as the “only” issue he saw eye-to-eye with Republicans on.

“It's definitely a confusing time to hear my Republican senator stands with Israel, to see the Republicans stand by Israel the entire time, the conservatives speaking the words that speak way closer to me on that matter,” Dori-Roberts said.

Pro-Israeli sentiment is especially strong in Texas’ government and its Republican leadership. A 2017 state law prohibiting state agencies from contracting with businesses who boycott Israel has survived several legal challenges, and only weeks after Oct. 7, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick purchased $3 million in Israeli bonds for his campaign. Abbott also singled out pro-Palestine student organizations on student campuses in an executive order designed to crack down on “anti-Semitic speech.”

Yet even amid his own personal losses and concern for growing anti-Israeli voices in the U.S., Dori-Roberts said the ceasefire was necessary because of Hamas' use of civilian cover and the group’s status as an “ideology.”

“I wanted that deal. I wanted the war to stop, I was not looking for revenge,” Dori-Roberts said. “I don't see any justice or justification of an army staying in occupied territory and people getting hurt, knowing that the other side does not care for civilians.”

Critics on both sides of the issue chastised Democrats throughout the conflict, some taking aim at then-President Joe Biden for not pausing military assistance while others lamented that some Democrats expressed concern with Israel’s use of force. Simultaneously, those on opposite ends of the issue have praised President Donald Trump for his involvement in the peace talks after the president sent an envoy of his own alongside Biden’s team.

Austinite Zaher Yacoub, a friend of Alafifi’s, said Trump’s involvement in the peace talks was a necessary step, especially because of Biden’s perceived failure at garnering an end to the conflict. But for Yacoub, which president’s involvement was more impactful is less important than the lives a sustained ceasefire could save.

“Every day we would see 50 people killed, so every day of a ceasefire is 50 less bodies,” Yacoub said.

As the war went on, some of the people most directly touched by its consequences in Texas struggled to decide how they wanted to engage with it publicly. Where Dori-Roberts was initially grieving, he then decided to share stories of his cousin and her children and family he had in Israel in interviews — his own way of contributing to “the greater good.”

Alafifi, too, grappled with getting involved: outside of a heated confrontation by a stranger in a grocery store, he had largely avoided any hostility or prejudice because of his connection to Gaza. But getting more publicly involved was stressful as well, especially because of Texas’ institutionalized pro-Israeli sentiment.

“For a while, I was actually kind of considering putting a table in Austin, [at] one of the parks, and just put a sign up [saying,] ‘Ask me about Gaza,’” Alafifi said. “That was something that I considered doing many times, but many people warned me that this might not be the wisest choice.”

Where Alafifi had his reservations, others have embraced being at the forefront of educating fellow Texans on the history of the region. Luai Abou-Emara has lived in Austin for 24 years — he likes to brag that the landmark Frost Bank building downtown was just foundation when he arrived — after emigrating from Saudi Arabia at 15. His immediate family in Palestine was removed from Jaffa, now an Israeli city, in the 20th century, but Abou-Emara still has extended family in Gaza.

When the conflict began, he became immediately involved, marching during protests and speaking during City Hall meetings to bring awareness to the acute effects a seemingly far away war has on Texans.

“​​There are people that are living amongst you over here who are suffering with this,” Abou-Emara said.

As the conflict continued to dominate headlines and public discussion, Abou-Emara noticed a lot of misinformation about the origins of the conflict, and gaps in his own knowledge — so he began a book club. Even with the ceasefire in place, Abou-Emara said the book club is far from done with its work.

“The plan is to do eight more in 2025, educating myself and educating whoever is interested in joining,” Abou-Emara said. “Some people that talk to me about it said that, ‘I never heard of Palestine before this year,’ so I'm really happy to propagate that knowledge to people.”

That need for involvement also has grown in his three kids, Abou-Emara said, who have been exposed to much of the war through social media on top of news coverage his family follows.

“They wanted to be with me, going there and, you know, waving Palestinian flags, and take that as an avenue to try to seek justice,” Abou-Emara said.

Abou-Emara was the one to break the news to his kids about the ceasefire, who could hardly fathom an end to the conflict — a byproduct of the normalization of the fighting, he said. Alafifi said he has also felt that inevitable numbing due to overexposure of videos and news from Gaza. His cousin’s death in the twilight of the conflict was far from the first time Alafifi and others gathered in the park to remember loved ones killed in Gaza throughout the 15-month conflict.

Almost routinely, Alafifi would check the published lists of confirmed dead in the morning, a process he said has both worn and numbed him.

“Even being from there, and even though you're very attached to everything that's happening, you're also becoming sort of desensitized to the news and to all the killing,” Alafifi said.

Although Alafifi’s four kids are younger than Abou-Emara’s and understand less about the war, it wasn’t long ago that they had been in Gaza on vacation, only months before Oct. 7. Each mention of a potential ceasefire brought with it hopes from Alafifi’s kids of a return trip to visit family once more — but his parents’ home in Gaza City was burned down months ago by Israeli forces. Its concrete frame, however, remains, and his family, who relocated to Deir al Balah, hopes to return their home to its former glory soon.

“Luckily, it still stands, even if it's completely burned,” Alafifi said. “So they're waiting for the day to go back to their house and rebuild it, fix it, live back there.”