In Gaza and Israel, ceasefire elicits happiness and delayed grief

As Israel’s Cabinet finally seals a ceasefire and hostage release deal with Hamas, an outpouring of happiness, sorrow, and delayed grief is coming to the fore across Israel and the Gaza Strip.

For war-weary Israelis, there is cautious hope for a return to normal life. For Palestinians in Gaza, who awoke Friday to the unsettling sounds of renewed Israeli airstrikes that have killed scores in recent days, Sunday’s ceasefire is a means to simply stay alive.

All is overshadowed by uncertainty.

“This war proved that our lives are cheaper than ever, and this is due to all the leaders who left us suffering,” says Suad Ghoula, a nurse from Gaza City living in a tent in Deir al-Balah.

Even the small celebrations that erupted in Gaza Wednesday and Thursday, amid an Israeli military offensive that has killed more than 46,700 Palestinians, are a sensitive subject for many.

“I was really upset with the people who started to celebrate. Happiness is not like this. Many people were killed, and many are still in the rubble,” Ms. Ghoula says.

For Palestinians, joy over an impending halt to the airstrikes is intertwined with sorrow over loved ones killed in a conflict that rights groups and United Nations experts have called genocide, a designation Israel rejects. Gazans describe the last two days of waiting for the ceasefire under shelling and missiles as among the “most difficult” of the war.

Uncertainty hangs in the air in Tel Aviv, too, as the families of hostages and other Israelis watch and wait to see if the war is truly over, and which hostages return alive.

“We want Hamas to be defeated, but we can’t live our lives in endless war,” Yoni, who withheld his full name, says from a Tel Aviv café. “We are all hurting in Israel and need to turn the page.”

Afraid to hope

For exhausted hostage families who have waited more than 460 days for their loved ones’ return, the deal was a sign their struggle may soon conclude – but not necessarily as they hoped.

The first three hostages are to be released Sunday as part of a staggered release of 33 in the first phase of the ceasefire. On Friday, the Israeli government informed the families of the 33, but Hamas has refused to say who is alive and who is dead. Another 65 hostages are not included in the first stage.

Zohar Avigdori, a high school teacher and uncle of 12-year-old Noam Avigdori, who was released by Hamas with her mother, Sharon, in November 2023, is still waiting for the release of a cousin.

“To say we have mixed emotions is a huge understatement,” he says from Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square. “Hope is something you learn to be afraid of.”

As they are for Palestinians in Gaza, Israeli worries are widespread.

“We are going to have difficult days ahead,” says Yair Keshet, uncle of hostage Yarden Bibas. Mr. Bibas; his wife, Shiri; and their two young children were kidnapped from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz by Hamas and remain in Gaza. Whether they have survived is unknown.

Mr. Keshet holds out hope that his great-nephews, 5-year-old Ariel and 2-year-old Kfir, kidnapped as an infant, are still alive and will be released in the first weeks. The children’s and their mother’s names are among the 33.

But he fears the deal will not last. “These phases are 40 to 60 days. Every day a crisis can happen, and it can fall apart. No one can guarantee anything.”

Absence everywhere

For many Palestinian families, the absence of killed loved ones looms larger than ever – as delayed grief sets in after months of living in survival mode.

Hanan al-Girjawi immediately thought of her mother, father, four brothers, and sister who were killed, along with more than 10 nephews and nieces, in an Israeli airstrike that collapsed their northern Gaza apartment building in November 2023.

“The coming days will be difficult for me as I think of my family who have been killed. I saw them dying, still under the rubble, and my mother’s hands reached out to me,” Ms. Girjawi says.

“I can’t go back to Gaza City and see them under the rubble. I want to go there and hug them, kiss them.”

Her lone brother who survived the missile strike has gone missing over the course of the war.

“Sometimes I think, Is he alive, feeling cold or warm? Is he dead? Is he hungry? Is he looking for me?” she says. “When I receive phone calls from strange numbers, I think, ‘Maybe it’s him.’”

Returns, reunions

Others, like Khadija Abu Thurayya, are busy packing. Even amid the Israeli missiles, thousands of Palestinians were preparing to leave behind displacement camps and return en masse to homes in Gaza City and the north.

As of Thursday, Ms. Abu Thurayya was busy in her makeshift tent, doing laundry and packing to leave Sunday for Gaza City and, eventually, their home in Jabalia.

There will be more challenges after the war, Ms. Abu Thurayya says, “but at least the bloodbath will have stopped.”

“I’m afraid that if I allow myself to be happy, something will happen at the last moment and everything will change,” she says. “I can’t trust Israel; they might change their minds.”

She is looking forward to being reunited in Gaza City with her eldest daughter, Amal, whom she hasn’t seen in more than a year.

Ms. Abu Thurayya’s daughter Suad, meanwhile, is driven by the thought of returning to her job as a kindergarten teacher, yet is weighed by the knowledge that three of her pupils were killed along with their families.

“I’m happy to return home no matter how destroyed it is,” says Ms. Ghoula, the nurse, dangling her house key in her hand. She has been told her home was converted into an Israeli military outpost and is still standing. “But I’m afraid of not seeing the same landmarks and features of Gaza City that we grew up with.

“I lost many friends and colleagues during the war. I’m afraid of the moment we go back home and cannot find our people – friends, neighbors we took for granted.”

On both sides, all agree that even should Sunday’s ceasefire lead to a long-term end of the war, healing is far in the distance.

“If you lose a home, you can build your home again. But losing family members is not easy. Who can return them to me?” says Ms. Girjawi. “During this war, entire families have been wiped out. They have tried to annihilate all of us, the good people and the bad people – they are all gone.”

“Oct. 7 isn’t one day, and it hasn’t stopped. It is continuous,” says Mr. Keshet, awaiting news of his nephew’s family.

“There can be no healing, no resurrection, no restoration of Israeli society until everyone is back home,” says Mr. Avigdori, the teacher. “The younger generation will live in the shadow of Oct. 7 for decades to come.”