The Tribune

By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

FIRST, the ground shook. Then, air raid sirens roared, and a voice came over the hotel intercom: “Please, everyone evacuate. Come immediately to the staircase. We’re under attack.”

What began as a business trip for Bahamian Dion Bowe and his wife unravelled into a fight for survival on Saturday after an Islamist militant group attacked Israel, sparking a war that has killed more than 1,500 people.

Mr Bowe, a senior partner of an advisory and investments firm based in Panama, The Bahamas and the United States, spent much of Saturday thinking he and his wife would die, leaving behind their six children.

The couple arrived in Jerusalem last Tuesday and expected to leave on Monday. Their plans changed when Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, fired thousands of rockets and entered Israel by land, sea and air, infiltrating towns and taking hostages.

 “In the staircase, you could see all the family and kids,” Mr Bowe said, recalling the early hours of the attack and their escape from the country. “They were coming down there as the missiles were coming in the air.

 “After about two hours of this, about 20 evacuations to bomb shelters, I told my wife no, we need to find a way to get to the airport to get out of here.”

 Mr Bowe said they relied on private security contractors to traverse blocked roads, get to the airport and take what appeared to be the last plane out around 8.30pm Saturday. They grabbed only one bag, leaving behind other belongings.

 Bahamian diplomats, including Foreign Affairs Minister Fred Mitchell, helped them. On the way to the airport, they saw dead bodies.

 “The news doesn’t have any (grasp) of what’s actually happening,” Mr Bowe said. “You’re only seeing ten per cent of the damage that’s on the ground in Israel.”

 “We had to wait and use our diplomatic relationships for us to leave and actually escape to Turkey.

 “The saddest part was once we were on the plane waiting to be evacuated, we witnessed like almost 125 rocket missiles launching at the airport when we were sitting on the plane.”

 “My wife, she was screaming at the pilot: ‘Get us out of there’.”

 “You could see the missiles were landing in the airport parking lot. They have some kind of security system where they shoot down the missiles from the airport, and you could see the missiles being shot down.”

 “We thought we would’ve died on the plane because you could still see the missiles in the air when the plane took off.”

 Mr Bowe and his wife live between The Bahamas and Panama. After leaving Turkey, he travelled to Morocco for a World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund meeting. His wife travelled back to Panama.

 Last week’s trip to Israel, he said, was their first and last visit to that country.

 “My mom, she’s in Nassau. I told my sister when I called her, I said ‘listen, before when she wakes up and she sees the news –– because I know typically most Bahamians they wake up and look at Fox News, CNN –– tell her when she wakes up we are safe, we on the way going to Turkey’, cuz I didn’t want her to know the news that I was still trapped over there,” he said.

 Yesterday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued an advisory for Bahamians in Israel, urging them to follow the instructions of local authorities. It is unknown whether Bahamians remain in that country or how many evacuated. The Bahamas does not have a diplomatic presence there but is working with other countries that do.

 Responding to the hostilities, Mr Mitchell told ZNS yesterday that the government supports a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

 “We’re not in the fight,” he added.