In Gaza, the goal now is to survive until the ceasefire

Shahd Raed Al Wahidi did not go out on the streets on Wednesday to celebrate the ceasefire agreement, as other Gazans did, finally seeing a horizon of hope after 15 months of suffering. She shared their hope, but she was scared. “Even though we are in the [displaced persons] camps, it was a dangerous thing to do,” she explains. Even more so now: since the three mediating countries — Qatar, the United States and Egypt — announced the agreement on Wednesday evening, the Israeli army has increased its air strikes in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 77 people, according to health authorities.

Shahd is 19 years old and has been living in a tent near a relative’s home in Deir al Balah since the beginning of the war in October 2023. Even if the guns finally fall silent on Sunday, as expected, her future is not very bright. Her family home in Gaza City is destroyed, like many others in a territory where 70% of buildings have been partially or totally damaged, according to United Nations data. “I am exhausted, but overall [the ceasefire agreement] is almost finished,” she says optimistically in an exchange of WhatsApp messages.

The joy over the ceasefire is mixed in with the fear of being added to the grim statistics of deaths, just when the end seems imminent. Another Gazan who has survived so far, Mohammed, sums up this feeling in an audio message to this newspaper: “We are scared about these three days, until midnight on Sunday,” the exact moment when the ceasefire is expected to come into effect. “What’s more, right now, they are bombing a lot.” Mohammed works in Al Awda, the only operational hospital in northern Gaza, and foresees “emergency days” as soon as the bombing stops. “Many wounded people will arrive who could not be treated before, because of the destruction of the ambulances. And cases of malnutrition that could not be treated or no one dared to bring.”

The Israeli government is expected to approve the agreement on Friday, according to local media, with the agreement taking effect two days later. The strikes will then cease and Israeli troops will begin to withdraw from populated areas of Gaza, in exchange for the release of the first Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

The hope that the attacks will soon end makes the images of the last few hours more dramatic than usual. A video posted on social media captures the atrocious moment when a young man shakes and talks to the corpse of his sister, her face covered in dust and blood, who died in an Israeli strike in the Al Daray neighborhood in Gaza City. “The war is over! Get up, get up, come on! The war is over, let’s go to the south [of Gaza]! Get up! Let’s leave the country, let’s go! Get up, come on!” he tells her before breaking into tears.

Aboud Al Majaida, who lives in a tent like tens of thousands of other Gazans, expressed a similar feeling in a video. “Everyone is interested in the issue of the ceasefire and the agreement, but at the same time the occupation [Israel] is carrying out intensive operations and massacres at the moment […] The ceasefire is a reason for happiness, but there are those who lose every day, even up to this moment […] Imagine, for example, that you lose your brother and an hour later the ceasefire is declared.”

Many Gazans have long responded to the question “How are you?” with the phrase “I’m alive, thank God.” They are the ones who have survived daily attacks and terrible living conditions, with a humanitarian crisis deepening in recent months as attention has focused on Lebanon and Syria. Around 46,800 lives have been lost, mostly children and women, or one in 50 Gazans, according to the Hamas government’s health ministry in Gaza. An undetermined number, estimated at several thousand, are under the rubble. A recent study by the scientific journal The Lancet estimated that the data from the Gaza health authorities — which Israel disputes, although U.N. agencies take it as a reference because in previous offensives it has ended up matching subsequent independent investigations — is actually too low. After comparing three different lists and extrapolating the results for nine months, The Lancet researchers said that the real death toll is 69.65% higher than reported. That is to say, Israeli strikes have killed more than 70,000 people.

Open wounds

“When we have finished surviving and waiting for the war to end, we will start to feel our open wounds,” says Fatma Muhaisen, 22, via WhatsApp messages. She feels that the announcement of a ceasefire has shaken her out of the apathy that comes with the struggle for survival, in which day-to-day life, for nearly 470 days, has consisted of finding food and water, collecting their few possessions and escaping to another place every time the Israeli army issued an evacuation order from the area. Her family, she says, has done this 11 times in these past 15 months. The last time was three months ago, when they fled their home in the northern part of the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, in Gaza City, with the latest invasion of Jabalia, which turned into a wasteland an area where 200,000 people had lived before the war. Even the so-called humanitarian zone of Al Mawasi, where displaced people were urged to stay in tents, has been bombed several times.

“When you’re trying to survive, you don’t really feel sad. And now that we’re less stressed, the sadness is starting to bubble up, although there have been tears of joy too. It’s hard to believe it’s over, it’s really hard to believe! […] But it’s also a partial happiness. With all the death and destruction around us, it’s like: is that it? Is it over? Are we going to keep living like this?” she asks.

Her plan for when the ceasefire comes into effect and the skies are no longer dark with Israeli fighter jets is to return to her family home in Gaza City, which she had to leave with her parents at the beginning of the war and which is “badly damaged.” “We have to start removing the rubble and cleaning it up so we can live in it. And wait for our loved ones to return from the south… Hopefully next week.”

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