Truce brings hope for peace
But Israel vows to resume war with intensity
It will take decades for Gaza to go back to where it was before. Giulia Marini, international advocacy officer at Al Mezan
A four-day truce in the Israel-Hamas war took effect last night, setting the stage for the exchange of dozens of hostages held by militants in Gaza in return for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
The halt in fighting promised some relief for Gaza’s 2.3 million people, who have endured weeks of Israeli bombardment, as well as families in Israel fearful for the fate of their loved ones taken captive during Hamas’ October 7 attack that triggered the war.
The ceasefire kicked off at 6pm last night and is to last at least four days.
During this period, Gaza’s ruling Hamas group pledged to free at least 50 of the about 240 hostages it and other militants took on October 7. Hamas said Israel would free 150 Palestinian prisoners.
Both sides will release women and children first, with the first expected to be freed early this morning.
Israel said the truce would be extended an extra day for every additional 10 hostages freed.
The truce-for-hostages deal was reached in weeks of intense indirect negotiations, with Qatar, the United States and Egypt serving as mediators. If it holds, it would mark the first significant break in fighting since Israel declared war on Hamas seven weeks ago.
The return of hostages could lift spirits in Israel, where their plight has gripped the country. Families of the hostages have staged mass demonstrations to pressure the government
to bring them home.
The agreement raised hopes of eventually winding down the war, which has levelled vast swaths of Gaza, fuelled a surge of violence in the occupied West Bank and stirred fears of a wider conflagration across the Middle East.
The hope is that the “momentum” from this deal will lead to an “end to this violence”, Majed al-Ansari, the spokesman of the Qatari foreign ministry said.
But Israel has pushed back against
such speculation, saying it was determined to resume its massive offensive once the truce ends.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant was quoted as telling troops yesterday that their respite will be short and that the war would resume with intensity for at least two more months.
Israel’s military offensive has turned much of northern Gaza into an uninhabitable moonscape.
Whole neighbourhoods have been erased. Homes, schools and hospitals
have been blasted by airstrikes and scorched by tank fire. Some buildings are still standing, but most are battered shells.
Nearly 1 million Palestinians have fled the north, including its urban centre, Gaza City, as ground combat intensified.
When the war does ends, any relief will quickly be overshadowed by dread as displaced families come to terms with the scale of the calamity and what it means for their future.
The Israeli army’s use of powerful explosives in tightly packed residential areas — which Israel describes as the unavoidable outcome of Hamas using civilian sites as cover for its operations — has killed over 13,000 Palestinians and led to staggering destruction. Hamas denies the claim and accuses Israel of recklessly bombing civilians.
Israel’s bombardment has become one of the most intense air campaigns since World War II, said Emily Tripp, director of Airwars, a London-based conflict monitor.
In the seven weeks since Hamas’ unprecedented October 7 attack, Israel unleashed more munitions than the United States did in any given year of its bombing campaign against the Islamic State group — a barrage the UN describes as the deadliest urban campaign since World War II.
In Israel’s grainy thermal footage of airstrikes targeting Hamas tunnels, fireballs obliterate everything in sight.
Videos by Hamas’ military wing feature fighters with rockedpropelled grenades trekking through smoke-filled streets. Fortified bulldozers have cleared land for Israeli tanks.
“The north turned into one big ghost town,” said Mkhaimer Abusada, a political scientist at Al-Azhar University in Gaza City who fled to Egypt last week. “People have nothing to return to.”
About half of all buildings across northern Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, according to an analysis of Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite data by Corey Scher of the CUNY Graduate Center and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University. With the UN estimating 1.7 million people are newly homeless, many wonder if Gaza will ever recover.
“You’ll end up having displaced people living in tents for a long time,” said Raphael Cohen, a senior political scientist at the Rand Corporation, a research group.
Displaced Palestinians said the four days of ceasefire won’t be enough.
“This is our nakba,” said 32-yearold journalist Tareq Hajjaj, referring to the mass displacement of an estimated 700,000 Palestinians during the
1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation — an exodus Palestinians call the “nakba,” or “catastrophe”.
Although publicly Palestinians reject the idea of being transferred outside Gaza, some privately admit they cannot stay, even after the war ends.
“We will never return home,” said Hajjaj, who fled his home in Shijaiyah in eastern Gaza City. “Those who stay here will face the most horrific situation they could imagine.”
The 2014 Israel-Hamas war levelled Shijaiyah, turning the neighbourhood into fields of grey rubble.
“This time the scale of destruction is exponentially higher,” said Giulia Marini, international advocacy officer at Palestinian rights group Al Mezan. “It will take decades for Gaza to go back to where it was before.”
It remains unclear who will take responsibility for that task.