''Israeli and Palestinian tsunami survivors reunite in Jerusalem''

"Israeli and Palestinian tsunami survivors reunite in Jerusalem to give

thanks and support"by Lauren Gelfond Feldinger

Yossi Gross waited a year and a half for his dream honeymoon to Thailand,

and now he predicts that's about how long it may take to recover from the

ordeal of surviving the East Asian tsunami.

When his mother died two months before his May 2003 wedding, he spent a

year in mourning, before contemplating a big celebratory trip. Then halfway

through their honeymoon, they got caught in the largest natural disaster in

recent history. But it wasn't all bleak.

Though still processing the tragedy, two weeks after making it back to

their Kiryat Gat home in central Israel, Gross, 30, and his wife Inbal, 23,

geared up for a night out in east Jerusalem. They wanted to thank and

catch up with Sami and Sally Khoury, the Palestinian couple whom they

credit with their safe trip back to Israel.

"It's not just that they were a light - they were life savers," Gross told

the Common Ground News Service. "Our money, passports and tickets were in a

safety box in our hotel lobby, which was totally destroyed."

The Palestinian couple from east Jerusalem, whom the Gross's met by chance

after fleeing the Thai beach in Phuket for their hotel's rooftop, paid for

the Israeli couple's food and lodgings while waiting for a plane home and

gave them $300 in cash--half of what they had in their pocket."We gave them money and the four of us really stuck together from the

rooftop to Bangkok [before flying home], but we didn't feel we really did

so much," said Sami Khoury, an event planner for the Palestinian Trade

Center, now back in his east Jerusalem home. "What we did, we would have

done for anyone."

"It was really mutual psychological support to help each other get out of

there," he added.

On the morning of the tidal wave, the Gross's were walking on the beach and

took a bathroom break at their hotel, two minutes away, while the Khoury's,

just finished with breakfast, followed a crowd down to the beach to see

what was the curiosity. Both couples suddenly saw a giant wave heading

toward the beach and fled up to the hotel roof.

"There were four giant waves in four hours," remembers Gross. "We stayed on

the roof, and starting talking to the others there. Absolutely by chance we

met a Palestinian couple from east Jerusalem."

Khoury and his wife Sally overheard Gross talking on his cell phone in

Hebrew, trying to reach the Israeli embassy, and the two couples started

exchanging information. Israel would later inform the Palestinians that

the Khoury's were safe, thanks to the information Gross passed on from his

rooftop calls.

"We decided to stay together because we would both try to get back to the

same place," said Gross. "In a situation like this you are people to people

in the same danger. It wasn't like 'Oh, we are Israeli and they are

Palestinian.' We were just people with the shared goal to return home in

peace; it doesn't matter if it's to east Jerusalem or to Kiryat Gat."

When they saw that the waves kept coming, the two couples decided to flee

together to higher ground in the nearby hills. Running through town,

between giant waves, the four jumped in the back of a truck heading north,

and later continued to the airport.

When the airport turned out to be closed, Gross used his cell phone to

reach Intel, the high-tech company where he and his wife work in Israel.

Company officials appraised him of flight times to Bangkok and arranged a

hotel room for the night. Still, they went to a different hotel, which the

Khoury's paid for. "We had a free room but didn't take it because we did

not want to be separated--we didn't know if we were out of danger yet,"

said Gross.

It turned out the worst was behind them, though their story didn't end

there. Last week, two weeks after the tsunami, on a cool weekend night in

east Jerusalem, the two couples warmly embraced.

For three hours they sat in the American Colony Hotel lounge talking in

English about everything from the disaster to family to the Palestinian

elections.

"I was sure we were going to meet each other again. First, I owed them

money! Now I still owe them a 'hafla' [a party or festive celebration, in

Arabic]," says Gross, laughing. "Anyway, I'm sure we are going to stay good

friends."

"It would be the same if they were Palestinian, Danish or Australian," he

added. "I never had a Palestinian friend or really knew Palestinians, but I

always knew there were extremists on both sides and good people on both

sides. And in difficult times, you can know people more deeply and see what

kind of people they really are."

Gross, who left after the weekend reunion for reserve duty in the Israeli

army at an undisclosed location, says he spoke at length to Khoury about

his experiences in the army and the reserves. "We both agreed that the

problems are because of a small group of extremists."

But even now in his army uniform, as he speaks on his cell phone from

reserve duty, and as the public around him debates the dramatic changes

happening in the Israeli and Palestinian governments, Thailand is still

very much on his mind.

"Thailand was amazing; so fun. The beaches were like heaven on earth. Now

it's hard to believe," he says. "My wife has been badly traumatized. We

will wait a while until she feels better and we forget the ordeal, but next

year maybe we will travel again. We talked to Sami and Sally about it and

they feel the same way."

The Khoury's are now trying to locate other Palestinian individuals or

organizations to encourage a Palestinian-led relief effort for tsunami

survivors. Sally Khoury is donating her December salary from her job at

the Academy for Educational Development, a US-based non-profit organization.

Staying in touch with the Israeli couple also helps them to deal better

with the tragedy, said Sami Khoury : "It was good to see them, you can even

say healthy. We have talked to so many people about what happened, but they

were the only ones who could really understand. That's one of the good

things to come out of all this. We'll definitely see them a lot."

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*The writer is a regular feature writer for the Jerusalem Post. She is a

Common Ground Award-winning journalist.

Source: CGNews, January 14, 2005

Visit CGNews website at http://www.commongroundnews.org

Distributed by the Common Ground News Service.

Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.