SAN ANTONIO – Much of Gaza is in ruins after two years of Israeli strikes destroying homes, hospitals, businesses and schools.<\/p>\n
Hamas hostages are free and back with their families. Local experts are calling the end of the war in Gaza bittersweet, saying there’s a long road ahead to bring peace to Gaza.<\/p>\n
The release of 20 surviving hostages sparked emotional reunions and bittersweet celebrations.<\/p>\n
“It is sweet because we have 20 hostages who have returned home to their families, and we’ve been waiting for that for over two years,” said Jewish Federation San Antonio Interim CEO Craig Berkowitch. “But it’s bitter, because we’ve lost so many lives.”<\/p>\n
Now that the hostages are home. The harder work begins.<\/p>\n
“Going forward, we have to continue to pray for peace between the Israeli and the Palestinian peoples,” Berkowitch said.<\/p>\n
“The most important part of the peace plan has been accomplished with the release of the 20 living hostages,” Jeff Addicott said. “Phase two is going to be, obviously, much more difficult. Everybody realizes that and that is establishing a governing body for Gaza.”<\/p>\n
Jeff Addicott is a St. Mary’s law professor with years of experience as a senior legal advisor with US Army special forces.<\/p>\n
He’s talking about President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan to end the Gaza conflict \u2014 calling the end of fighting and release of hostages is phase one.<\/p>\n
“There are some glimmers of hope that we can establish some type of stability and rebuilding,” Addicott said. “About 90% of the infrastructure is dust and rubble that all has to be rebuilt, but you’ve got to do it in an orderly way, and that’s going to take some patience.”<\/p>\n
Addicott says he expects the next part of this process to be long and drawn out for the area and its people.<\/p>\n
We asked Berkowitch about the possibility of mending the relationship between<\/p>\n
“Listen, war is terrible,” he started. “But after any war, there is an opportunity, and there is an opportunity to rebuild peacefully…I think we need to support prosperity for both moving forward.”<\/p>\n
We reached out to several groups who have voiced support Palestinians — they weren’t available for an interview.<\/p>\n
Jewish Voice for Peace sent us a statement saying they support the ceasefire and release of hostages, but they’re still calling for freedom for Palestine.<\/p>\n
As for what this means for the US; the military is weighing its options to send around 200 troops to Isreal to help support stabilization efforts.<\/p>\n
Officials say no US boots will be on the ground in Gaza.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO – Much of Gaza is in ruins after two years of Israeli strikes destroying homes, hospitals,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[2378,1945,2374,973,2376,2377,2373,2375,82,84,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-1791","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-conflict","9":"tag-gaza","10":"tag-hostages","11":"tag-infrastructure","12":"tag-israeli","13":"tag-palestinian","14":"tag-peace","15":"tag-rebuilding","16":"tag-san-antonio","17":"tag-san-antonio-headlines","18":"tag-san-antonio-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}