For us Gazans, reaching a ceasefire has been a dream, a yearning that stretched through endless nights and immeasurable pain. But let us not deceive ourselves: this is no true ceasefire. At best, it is a temporary halt to the brutal attacks by Israeli occupation forces that have reduced Gaza to rubble, and its people to dust. We cannot go back to how things were; there is no “normal” left to return to. And even if there were, after what we have been through, it wouldn’t be enough.

Rather than joy, this long-awaited moment brought fragile and uneasy relief. The deafening roar of warplanes has stopped, and the ground no longer quakes with explosions. Yet, in Gaza, silence has never meant safety. The echoes of bombs still linger in our minds, etched into every corner of our memories. For those of us who have endured multiple cycles of wars, ceasefires are not moments of celebration; they are brief pauses in a seemingly never-ending tragedy, only the prelude to the next war.

“Questions haunt our minds, but no one gives us answers,” 29-year-old Mahmoud Sharfi told me. “Where will we live? There are no homes left in Gaza. Are we supposed to live in tents forever? What about our future? What about our children — where will they study?”

Sharfi and his six-member family were displaced from Gaza City in November 2023. After several forced evacuations, they now live in a tent in Khan Younis. “We desperately wanted to go back to our home, but on the first day of the ceasefire, my friend in Gaza City sent me a photo of our building in the Al-Nasser neighborhood. The entire five-floor building, which housed four families, was reduced to rubble,” he explained.

“My parents are still waiting for the seventh day of the first [phase of the] ceasefire so they can return home, but I can’t tell them the house is gone,” he admitted. “My mother keeps saying, ‘We’ll go back, there’s no need for tents — we’ll be back in our rooms soon.’ But I know the truth, I’ll have to take our tent with us wherever we go.”

“I read the terms of the agreement word by word, but I couldn’t find the clause that would bring back my friends and aunt who were killed,” Sharfi continued, his voice heavy with pain and grief. “What we need is not just a ceasefire for right now — we need a ceasefire for the next generation. Our generation is already finished; we are either dead, wounded, amputees, or carrying trauma that will never leave us.”

Cycles of devastation

During the first six months of the war, when I was still in Gaza, I remember sitting with friends, trying to make sense of the devastation around us. We clung to our phones, desperately hoping for news of a ceasefire, or even a brief truce.

Our conversations would begin with updates on who had survived, and quickly turn to who hadn’t. These weren’t stories about distant strangers: they were about neighbors, friends, family, people we grew up with. Each name spoken felt like losing a part of ourselves, a loss that can never be replaced, and memories that will never be forgotten.

These feelings of grief and devastation are not new for us Gazans. In 2008-9, when I was 7 years old, I witnessed my first war. The second came in 2012, and another in 2014. Each time, we rebuilt our lives, and each time, it was all destroyed again.

In 2008, Israel killed my cousin Amjad. In 2012, an airstrike hit my neighbor’s home. In 2014, we were forcibly displaced from our home after it was partially destroyed by Israeli artillery. Now, in this current genocide, the losses have become unbearable. Five of my closest friends — Mahmoud Alnaouq, Yousef Dawas, Abdallah Baghdadi, Mahmoud Sbaih, and Mohammed Wesam — were killed. Seventy-two members of my family, including my uncle Hisham, his wife Hana, their sons Basel and Mohammed, and their grandchildren, were all killed alongside them. These weren’t random killings. This was annihilation: a deliberate erasure of an entire family.

When the ceasefire was declared, it brought no real solace or closure. All it gave us was a bit of time: to cry, to mourn, to face the staggering reality of our loss, and to search for the shattered bodies of countless loved ones whose lives were cut short. Forty-six close family members of a relative of mine were killed in a single airstrike on Nov. 21, 2023. Twenty-eight of their bodies still lie buried under what was once a neighborhood block.

The main challenge in Gaza now is to survive the days ahead: how will we live without homes, without resources, and without the basic necessities of life? How will we carry on without our families?

The UN estimates that more than 90 percent of the housing units in Gaza have been damaged, with 160,000 completely destroyed and another 276,000 severely or partially damaged. And this is just based on areas they’ve been able to assess: in northern Gaza and other unreachable regions, the destruction is likely even worse. This means that nearly 2 million people in Gaza will remain displaced for the foreseeable future, forced to carry their entire lives on their backs, as they move from one place to another in search of shelter and basic necessities.

The education system has also been left in ruins. All universities have been destroyed, most schools have been bombed, and those that remain standing are now used as shelters for displaced families. An entire generation’s education was brought to a standstill, and it will take years, if not decades, to undo the damage.

But it’s not just buildings that have collapsed; it’s the belief in a brighter future, the hope that tomorrow might be better. A friend’s daughter, who fled Gaza to Egypt, told her father she’s too afraid to ever return. “What if they bomb us again?” she asked. He had no answer for her.

An ambiguous future

In the aftermath of the ceasefire, the political situation in Gaza remains deeply uncertain and complicated. The agreement, while offering temporary respite from the killing, leaves Gazans with more questions than answers. A key point in the agreement’s appendix reads, “All procedures in the first stage will continue in stage two so long as the negotiations of the conditions of implementing stage two are ongoing, and the guarantors of this Agreement shall work to ensure that negotiations continue until an agreement is reached.”

Such ambiguous language has left the population anxious and confused. What qualifies for negotiations to be ongoing, and what happens if these negotiations fail? Can Israel unilaterally decide to end negotiations to prevent reaching the second stage? And how can the guarantors of the agreement — Qatar and Egypt — be entrusted to ensure compliance, when historically, such guarantees have mostly proven ineffective? With no clear answers to these pressing questions, many Gazans fear a return to the same devastating cycle — a continuation of the 18-year-long siege, political stagnation, and internal political divisions, mainly between Hamas and Fatah.

Before October 7, Gaza was already in a dire state. With over 80 percent of the population living below the poverty line and electricity limited to just a few hours a day, basic needs had become a daily struggle for most residents of the Strip. According to the World Bank and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), 71 percent of Gazans were suffering from depression, a reflection of the immense psychological toll of living under Israeli siege. Over 60,000 people had emigrated from Gaza in the previous years, fleeing the devastating conditions in search of opportunities abroad.

Israel’s siege and repeated assaults on the Strip since 2007 have been the primary source of Gazans’ suffering. With unwavering support from the United States and other powers, Israel has been allowed to enforce the longest siege in modern history, commit violations of international law, and continue its systematic dispossession of Palestinians without facing meaningful consequences.

But as Palestinians, we have often found ourselves victims of the poor political and strategic calculations of our leaders: from the Oslo Accords, which derailed the trajectory of our struggle, to the political schism of 2007 that fractured our people geographically and ideologically, and most recently, the October 7 attack, which failed to bring any tangible improvement for Gazans. 

Hamas has long exploited national sentiments and manipulated emotions, while silencing dissenting voices to justify actions that often result in adverse consequences for Gaza’s population. Their inability to tackle key issues since taking power in Gaza in 2007 — poverty, unemployment, infrastructure collapse, and international isolation — has eroded Gazans’ trust. Rather than advancing our cause, their actions have deepened societal divides, further isolating Gaza from the broader Palestinian reality and undermining our collective struggle.

At the same time, some Gazans view Hamas’ military actions as a necessary response to decades of Israeli oppression, with some seeing resistance as the only viable path to change. Israel’s genocide has so far resulted in the deaths of over 50,000 Palestinians, and the international community’s unwavering support for Israel has left many Palestinians disillusioned with concepts like human rights and global justice. For those who hold this perspective, resistance is not a choice but a necessity imposed on Hamas, a means of asserting their existence in the face of overwhelming violence and systemic neglect.

Toward political unification

Regardless of these diverging views, Hamas must recognize the immense responsibility it now bears as the governing authority in Gaza. This moment demands more than slogans or symbolic gestures — it requires substantive action and accountability. Gazans need to know what the leadership is doing to address their immediate and long-term needs. What measures are in place to ensure that aid reaches everyone? What strategies are being developed to rebuild Gaza’s shattered infrastructure? And what assurances can be offered — if any at all — that this ceasefire is not just another prelude to further destruction?

“Until now, Hamas has not provided Gazans with a clear and detailed statement about the ceasefire agreement — its terms, conditions, or what, if anything, was achieved through the staggering sacrifices they made,” 26-year-old Ahmed Hosnay told me. For families who lost their loved ones, their homes, their entire lives in the war, this lack of transparency feels like yet another layer of neglect.

Realistically, neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority alone has the capacity to stop the killing, arrests, or destruction inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. What is needed is accountability for Israel’s actions. Indeed, the ceasefire in Gaza seems to come at the cost of a new wave of attacks against Palestinians in Jenin and across the West Bank.

But the political rivalry between Hamas and the PA — abetted by Israel’s longstanding strategy of “divide and conquer” — ensures that Palestinians remain politically fragmented and unable to present a unified front to demand accountability or justice. The lack of unity not only weakens Palestinian advocacy on the global stage but also exacerbates the divisions that have been exploited to prolong the occupation and the suffering of the Palestinian people.

Had there been true Palestinian unity, perhaps the ceasefire agreement could have provided an opening to address violations in both Gaza and the West Bank, and relaunch talks towards ending Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land. Instead, Fatah remained entirely excluded from the ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, while the PA seeks to regain unilateral governance of the Gaza Strip without Hamas while it helps Israel crack down on Palestinian resistance movements in the West Bank.

For Gazans, any hope for a better future requires more than resolving the current crisis. It requires a fundamental transformation of Gaza’s reality and Palestinian politics, one that achieves lasting peace, ends the blockade, and unites Palestinian leadership in the pursuit of justice and dignity for all. Until then, the fear that we might have to endure this again — next year, in five years, or 10 — will never truly go away.