For Jewish-Canadian Pavel Jeloudovski, been watching the footage of the attacks by Hamas Saturday on Israel has emotionally difficult.
“The deliberate, hateful killing of innocent civilians,” he says with tears in his eyes. “This (series of events) is very disturbing.”
He says his cousin - an Israeli police officer - was killed in the coordinated attacks by Hamas, which has been declared a terrorist group by Canada and other Western nations.
Jeloudovski still has family in Israel and says his parents are staying in a bomb shelter, living just 30 kilometres from the border.
Monday, he was among hundreds who attended a rally in support of Israel in Halifax, as a way to find support.
“To pay my respects to my family member to the best of my abilities, and to help other people who feel what I feel right now,” he adds.
Israel is retaliating and declared war on Hamas Sunday. Since then, Israeli warplanes have been hammering the Gaza Strip, sending tens of thousands of Palestinians fleeing into United Nations shelters.
The escalation of the long-standing tensions and hostilities between the two sides has killed at least 1,900 people and injured thousands.
“The likelihood of civilians being on the forefront of this war is really high, both on the Israeli side, and in Gaza as well,” says Robert Huish, associate professor of International Development Studies at Dalhousie University.
Huish has been to Israel several times, teaching in a university there.
He says the tactics used by Hamas are unlike what’s occurred in the past.
“The fact that you had over a 150 hostages taken into Gaza from Israel, that's completely unprecedented,” said Huish.
Residents of the cramped region of Gaza are now enduring heavy airstrikes from Israel. The Palestinian territory is ruled by Hamas and those living there have faced historic hostilities spanning decades.
“I'm worried about my best friend's mental health and her family back home,” says Katerina Nikas.
Nikas, who is of Greek heritage, considers herself an ally for those who support Palestinians, and helped organize a rally on behalf of a group called “Free Palestine Halifax” Monday.
She says her Palestinian friends are often afraid to speak out, so she does what she can.
“I think a lot of people don't know about Palestine, I think just educating the day to day person is mostly what I can do,” she says. “(Although) it’s very hard for one person to dismantle a system of occupation.”
Huish says the fighting has derailed any possibility for peace in the near future.
“The problem is, the brokerage, the peace-building that’s been going on in the Middle East, the diplomacy that was even emerging between Saudi Arabia and Israel has all been sidelined,” he says.
“No matter what happens here, that sort of normalcy of what we've gotten used to between Israel and Palestine, that's just been reset.”
