TEL AVIV, Israel — When the war began in Gaza following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas-led militants, the family of Hisham Awartani decided he should remain in the U.S., where he's a student at Brown University, rather than return home for the holidays to Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
"My husband didn't want Hisham to come back for Christmas," says Awartani's mother Elizabeth Price. "He thought our son would be safer [in the U.S.] than in Palestine."
