ARKANSAS, USA — Communicating with your family through a screen isn't the easiest thing to do, but it's what Hashem Abdelrahman has to do.
"I'm just praying that my family stays safe, they're like 30 minutes out from where all the conflict is going on," he said. "They live in the West Bank."
It's an area not far from the recent fighting happening in the Gaza Strip.
"It just hurts so much to see, really there's not much you can do," Abdelrahman said. "We have two-thirds of our family, we live in a small village called Ein Yabrud."
It's been hard these past 11 days of conflict between Hamas and Israel. With the time difference and the missiles raining down, Abdelrahman says trying to stay positive for them wasn't an easy thing to do.
"Just keep telling them, it's going to be alright, fine, the storm is going to pass," he said.
And while the majority of our attention is on the two sides firing missiles at each other, Abdelrahman says it's a different story in the streets in the region.
"It's affecting like I said, 90% of the country don't even want this war," he said. "Don't even want a missile shot off, there's a lot of neighborhoods where the Israelis and the Palestinians live side-by-side, with no problem."
Unfortunately, it's a conflict that has been happening since the 1940s.
"I feel like this happens every other couple of years," Abdelrahman said.
Different fighters, but the same struggle. Hamas has been around since the late '80s but really picked up somewhat recently.
"Since 2007, there's been probably three major conflicts," Dr. Mark Mullenbach, a political science professor at the University of Central Arkansas said. "A lot of these issues get passed on from one generation to the next."
And while this may be a conflict that could possibly continue in the future, Abdelrahman isn't giving up hope for better days for his family members in the West Bank.
"Like I said, 90% of the country, Israeli's, Palestinians, want to live in peace," he said. "They can live on their side of the country, and the Palestinians can live on their side of the country, without any problems, and I think that's where it's going to bring the solution to."