MILWAUKEE — Escalating violence in Israel and throughout the Gaza strip now has global airlines canceling flights until the conflict subsides.
Violence between Israeli and Palestinian mobs, and between the Israeli military and Hamas, has not been seen at this level since 2014.
It's actually exceeded that 50-day war, on some levels, in just a matter of days.
The violence has been fueled by planned evictions of Palestinian families in Jerusalem. Protests against those evictions were met with police brutality and several casualties. Militants in Gaza have tried to fire more than 1,500 rockets in Israel and Israel responded with devastating airstrikes. Dozens now dead, and three rockets from Lebanon fell off the Israeli coast as tensions in the region are boiling over right now.
The conflict has very real connections and consequences for many Wisconsinites right now.
Two college-aged girls with Wisconsin ties shared what they are seeing amid conflict between Israel and Palestine.
The sounds of rockets and sirens is what Milwaukee native, Lauren Cayle, has been hearing the past few days.
She’s in Tel-Aviv, Israel amid conflict with Palestine. Lauren graduated from Nicolet High School last year and decided to take a gap yeah in Israel.
She’s now living through something she never expected.
“Every time they explode, they shake the whole building, and you hear sirens and it is just terrifying,” Milwaukee Native, Lauren Cayle said.
From Lauren’s apartment, you can see rockets coming in, and the Iron Dome at work shooting them down. She said the past few nights have been tough, waking up to sirens and having to move to a bomb shelter in less than a minute.
“I just spent my second night in a row up all night in a bomb shelter. You are scared to go to sleep because you are scared you wont wake up. You’re scared because you can hear the sirens, but I don’t know, it’s scary. I literally have not slept in three days, because I have just been up waiting for the sirens to stop,” Cayle said.
Meanwhile, in Milwaukee is Shahd Sawalhi, who is from Palestine and studying abroad at Marquette University while her family is back home.
“I’m not going to lie, I have definitely had sleepless nights the past couple of days and not just because of finals. It's because I just get hooked up on watching the news, and with the time difference trying to keep up with what’s going on,” Marquette Student, Shahd Sawalhi said.
For her, it’s a terrifying feeling while she is thousands of miles away from her loved ones in Gaza.
“It just breaks my heart when I talk to my friends and cousins, or even see the posts they post on the internet of videos or pictures, because it’s residential buildings right next to their houses that are being demolished,” Sawalhi said.
While they are both unsure of when things will end, both sides share their fears and concerns and what this conflict looks like from their windows.