Opinion: As the cease-fire takes effect, Gaza is full of grief and defiance
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Since the Israel-Hamas war began in October 2023, Gaza has reportedly lost roughly 6% of its population of over 2 million people. An estimated 100,000 Palestinians have left the strip and more than 55,000 are presumed dead. About 90% of residents have been displaced at least once, and nearly 69% of Gaza’s buildings were fully or partially destroyed.
Proportionally, this makes the last 15 months one of the bloodiest onslaughts in modern history, and among the first to be live-streamed.
In the first hours of the cease-fire that took effect Jan. 19, the horrifying statistics seemed to have slipped in the background, replaced with a collective sigh of relief from Gazans. But as that dust settled and people started to feel their surroundings, relief was soon weighed down by sorrow and intense grief.
Palestinians in Gaza are confronting an apocalyptic landscape of devastation after more than 15 months of fighting between Israel and Hamas.
From the U.K., I’ve been in touch with my friends and family back home mostly by phone. Those who suppressed their grief throughout the war to survive are now forced to face reality. And those whose loss was somewhat manageable are anticipating more loss as horrors are uncovered. For many, it is both, especially as tens of thousands of Palestinians began to return north on Monday.
My aunt lost her home in Gaza City and ended up displaced in a greenhouse in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza. Soon after, her son Yousef, who stayed behind, was killed in his flat by an Israeli missile.
Although she is relieved the killing has paused, returning home seems painful. Without Yousef, she says, “there isn’t much to return to,” although she adds, “I want to return to hug my son’s grave.” Yousef was buried in a makeshift grave in one of northern Gaza’s public spaces.
The mass killing forced Gazans to bury their dead quickly and randomly in open spaces and even homes. My neighbor Arafat, 41, was killed by an Israeli drone and buried in the soccer field behind my family home in Gaza City. At least 15 bodies rest in that place.
Ayman, a dentist from the now-leveled Jabalia who was displaced to Khan Yunis, told me that a cease-fire would allow him to return home “to dig out his wife and three children and give them a dignified burial.” They were blown to pieces in an Israeli airstrike on his home in November 2023. He buried them in the ruins of what was once his lounge.
Like thousands of Gazans, Ayman suspended his grief and lived in denial: “I convinced myself that I was never married, never had kids.” He could not manage intense grief alongside the daily struggle to stay alive, so he in effect chose self-induced psychological death to survive. With the cessation of Israeli attacks, he’s hit with “a nauseating reality check.”
People welcome the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Netzarim Corridor, which separates northern and southern Gaza and is where Palestinians are crossing. But the prospect of returning north fills some with dread. They have heard stories about the “kill zone” in Netzarim, and many fear what they will witness as they head back through it.
The takeaway is obvious: Each additional day of suffering is driving a wider wedge between Israelis and Palestinians. Enough is enough.
One of my relatives, Muhammad, 22, tried to cross the corridor, failed and was nearly killed. He spoke of seeing “wells filled with corpses.” Other bodies were left out to decompose.
My friend and former neighbor Rami, 46, says he has tried not to anticipate the “next day” after the fighting paused, focusing instead on the moment he packs his stuff and walks back to his home in Gaza City’s Sheikh Redwan district. “Too much to process. I don’t know what to expect, but I’m open to all scenarios,” he said.
Rami’s family will return home, or what was left of it, with a plus one. He and his wife adopted a baby girl whose family was killed in an Israeli airstrike in southern Gaza. She was one of more than 17,000 children orphaned in the strip. To Rami’s family, she is a glimpse of hope.
Thousands of people are still missing, presumed to be buried under the 42 million tons of rubble. So many Gazans are grieving in advance, firm in the belief that their loved ones whom they haven’t heard from in months are beyond their reach under the debris.
“The trail back home will be one of hope and horror,” my mother tells me when I ask if she is ready to return.
She, like most Gazans, is also anxious about reconstruction. The deal reached between Israel and Hamas called for six weeks of halted fighting, including the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners; the negotiation of a full end to the war; and then finally the rebuilding of Gaza. But it’s unclear if negotiations will reach that point.
The destruction in Jabalia is an ominous sign that reconstruction will take years. Palestinians’ spirit cushions the impact of their grief, giving them hope in their future and confidence in their resilience. But defiance is grief waiting to explode into rage. What happens then? What happens when the thousands of orphans grow up?
People are wondering if they will be allowed to rebuild. Days after the Gaza cease-fire began, Israel launched an attack on the other Palestinian territory, the West Bank.
“What Israelis failed to achieve via war crimes, they may try to achieve by making our lives sustainably unbearable,” Ayman, the dentist from Jabalia, told me. “They made parts of Gaza uninhabitable and that may force people to leave willingly if given the chance.”
Then he added defiantly: “But I’m here to stay. I’m where my children’s bones are.”
Emad Moussa is a Palestinian British researcher and writer specializing in the political psychology of inter-group and conflict dynamics.
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