Deir el-Balah, Gaza – A cautious relief seems to hover over central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah as people stand outside their tents, talking to each other about the ceasefire that is set to come into force after approval by the Israeli cabinet.
Some people are celebrating, while others are worrying that this respite will prove brief and incomplete, like past ceasefires that Israel violated.
- list 1 of 3Map of Gaza shows how Israeli forces will withdraw under ceasefire deal
- list 2 of 3Israel confirms signing phase one of Gaza ceasefire deal with Hamas
- list 3 of 3Key moments that led to Gaza ceasefire deal
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This ceasefire has been touted by United States President Donald Trump as a lasting solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, and Israel has said it will cease bombing Gaza 24 hours after being approved by the Israeli cabinet, which is meeting on Thursday to discuss it.
‘I think he’ll go with it’
Nasser al-Qernawi, 62, sat cradling his radio on the bed in his family’s shelter, patched together from plastic sheeting and a bit of blue tarp.
He has listened to it every day for the past two years, and seems almost in awe of the latest news he heard coming through it.
“Yesterday the news was tough, in the morning. But now, it’s better,” he said. “I feel it’s closer, but he didn’t say the word ‘peace’, Netanyahu didn’t. The others said the word ‘peace’, but he didn’t.
“So we’re still not sure what he’s thinking, but I think he’ll go with it… if Trump comes and he signs it, that’s it.”
Many hopes seem to be riding on Trump, either due to confidence in the US president’s diplomatic skills or to a deep distrust in the motivations and actions of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I have doubts about this, about 90 percent, because Netanyahu is a dirty traitor,” Khamis Othman, who has been displaced from Bureij camp, told Al Jazeera.
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“He just thinks this is a winning card for executing his missions. The [Israelis could] take what is theirs and attack us again.”
In January, Hamas had released 33 Israeli and five Thai nationals who were held captive in Gaza as part of a ceasefire deal.
However, Israel unilaterally violated the ceasefire in mid-March, resuming its genocidal war on Gaza.
“If they truly cared about their captives,” Othman exclaimed, “they wouldn’t have attacked them along with the resistance fighters.”
Regardless, he seems at least willing to wait and see what happens next: “From what we last heard, they’re saying Friday is when it happens, so hopefully, on Friday, it’ll start.”
‘We can’t go back home’
Ilham al-Zaanin (Umm Mahdi), 60, has been displaced with her five children and 10 grandchildren since the war began, and has mixed feelings about this announcement.
On the one hand, she told Al Jazeera, she is filled with relief that the bloodshed may now stop, yet on the other hand, she is mourning the fact that they cannot go back home.
Umm Mahdi and her family are from Beit Hanoon in the northernmost governorate of Gaza, a zone that will remain occupied by the Israeli army during the first phase of the ceasefire, so the family will be displaced, and she doesn’t know for how long.
“We went back to our house in Beit Hanoon during the [January] truce,” Umm Mahdi said. “Our home was gone, though, everything was gone. So we came back here and are staying with my husband’s family.
“Everything is destruction, loss … God compensate and help everyone; everyone has their own affliction … honestly, we’re hurting,” she said sadly.
The hurt is afflicting all generations in Gaza, her cousin Itidal al-Zaanin (Umm Mohammad) said, pointing to her grandchildren whose future, she fears, is already lost.
“My son’s children, instead of dreaming of what they want to be when they grow up or playing with toys, they’re walking around with knives, carrying heavy water jugs over long distances to sell.
“Some days they come and tell me and their mother about the human remains they see flung around after attacks … ‘Grandma we found them in pieces,’ they would tell me,” Umm Mohammad shook her head.
“Tomorrow we’ll be shocked by the real numbers of the martyrs and the wounded and the missing, those under the rubble,” Umm Mahdi said.
“Over these two years, I’ve seen everything imaginable, everything painful. We saw slaughter, death, trucks full of dead people, animal carts.”
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To trust or to doubt?
Everyone who spoke to Al Jazeera expressed happiness and relief that, at the very least, the bloodshed would stop and some people would have an opportunity to return to their homes, or what remains of them.
Othman is going to wait and see.
“You hear it so often … there’s been an accomplishment, then it fails … optimism is something that sits in the shadows,” he said.
Umm Mahdi is also waiting to see: “[Israel] cannot be trusted. You see, in Lebanon, they bomb them every day. We hope that the mediators will intervene to preserve our safety.
Even in the best-case scenario, Umm Mohammad isn’t sure anything will be the same again.
“My sisters lost their children, and our homes were destroyed. Our lives and our whole future have been lost. There’s no true joy in our hearts, but at least the bloodshed stopped,” she said.
“We’ve been begging Arab nations, foreign countries and Muslims who share our faith for two years, but no one cared about us or our children, children who saw bodies torn apart near Al-Aqsa Hospital, and who saw children like them, martyrs.”
Al-Qernawi held on to his optimism about as tightly as he held his radio, which has kept him company in more ways than one through two years of genocide.
“People come to listen with me sometimes, my daughters, or our neighbours,” he said.
“God willing, people will go back to their homes. God willing, the war is over,” al-Qernawi insisted.
“The whole purpose of the war and resuming it was all about displacement.
But now it’s over; they missed their chance.”
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