Palestinians in the Tal al-Hawa area, southwest of Gaza City. The ceasefire in Gaza has taken hold. Hostages and prisoners have been exchanged. But amid the utter devastation of two years of war, a sense of gloom pervades. Photo / Saher Alghorra, The New York Times
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip expressed relief today that Israel had halted its two-year military offensive in the territory, and that hostages and prisoners had been exchanged. Still, many felt there was little to celebrate.
Two years of war has left the enclave in ruins, its cities reduced to rubble, tens of thousands dead, and the health system devastated.
Despair and hopelessness are pervasive, and many no longer see a future.
“It’s important that the bombing has stopped, but there’s nothing to be happy about,” said Saed Abu Aita, 44, who is displaced in central Gaza.
“My two daughters were killed, my home was destroyed, and my health has deteriorated.”
Israel’s military campaign against Hamas killed more than 67,000 people in Gaza, according to local health officials. Their tolls do not specify the number of combatants, but they say thousands were children.
Some in Gaza said they do not see the release today of nearly 2000 Palestinian prisoners — one of Hamas’ stated reasons for launching the war in the first place — as an achievement worth the cost.
Hamas secured the exchange by trading the remaining hostages out of the some 250 seized during the October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel that ignited the war.
Abu Aita said a fragment of shrapnel penetrated his rib cage when an Israeli airstrike hit his hometown, Jabalia, in northern Gaza in October 2023, soon after the war began.
For more than a year, he said, he has not been able to find a doctor who could remove the fragment.
He said he hoped that the return of the last 20 living hostages to Israel today — a crucial element of the ceasefire that went into effect last week — would pave the way to ending the war.
“They needed to go home a long time ago,” he said. “Holding them in Gaza gave Israel a pretext to continue its bombing.”
Palestinians in Gaza have lived through hunger, fear and bombardment.
With a ceasefire now in effect, aid groups say they are attempting to scale up relief as much as possible to blunt the humanitarian catastrophe and allow people to rebuild their shattered lives.
Many relief officials blamed Israeli restrictions for shortages that led to hunger and malnutrition throughout the enclave.
While Israel blocked all supplies entering Gaza for nearly three months earlier this year, Israeli officials have recently said they were no longer limiting the amount of aid that can go into the territory.
Under the ceasefire agreement, Israel committed to allowing a surge of desperately needed supplies into the enclave.
Yesterday the United Nations said it was working to boost its aid to Gaza, including by bringing in cooking gas for the first time since March.
Many have had to resort to making bread with firewood, because there was little gas or electricity available.
“For two years, we’ve dreamed of this moment,” said Amani Nasir, 30. “We’ve had enough of tents, fire, displacement and thirst.”
Under the deal, at least 600 trucks of supplies will enter Gaza per day, and Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt will be reopened.
Abdel Nasser al-Ajrami, the head of Gaza’s bakers’ union, which works with the World Food Programme to distribute subsidised bread, said the humanitarian situation has been steadily improving since the announcement of the ceasefire last week.
“Today is better than yesterday, and tomorrow will hopefully be better,” he said, adding that 17 bakeries were now operating across central and southern Gaza.
But there is some scepticism that the ceasefire will hold.
The deal clinched last week by United States, Qatari, Turkish, and Egyptian mediators did not resolve some of the toughest sticking points between the warring sides and left Hamas still armed and the dominant force in parts of Gaza for the time being.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his Government will not agree to end the war until Hamas’ political and military wings in Gaza are dismantled.
While Hamas has expressed willingness to hand civilian rule over Gaza to another Palestinian entity, it has not committed to giving up its weapons.
Since Israel halted its military offensive and pulled back from parts of Gaza in the past few days, Hamas has begun reasserting itself on the streets.
Witnesses in Gaza said they had begun to see small groups of Hamas’ internal security fighters standing guard at some intersections.
On Monday, Hamas fighters clashed in Gaza City with a rival gang of gunmen and attempted to capture its members, according to the Hamas-run Interior Ministry.
During a visit to Israel today to coincide with the hostage release, US President Donald Trump was asked by a reporter what he thought about the possibility of Hamas reasserting itself as a police force and shooting rivals.
He replied that this was because “they do want to stop the problems” and suggested the US was not opposed, temporarily.
“They’ve been open about it, and we gave them approval for a period of time,” Trump said.
Trump’s ambitious vision for Gaza includes bringing in a post-war security force to stabilise the enclave, as well as training a new Palestinian police force to maintain law and order. That prospect will be difficult should Hamas insist on continuing to play a dominant role.
Abdullah Shehab, 32, said he was worried that the respite in fighting would only be temporary because Hamas had not agreed to Israel’s conditions for ending the war.
In recent days, Shehab said, Hamas was trying to show that it “hasn’t given up its rule” in Gaza.
Yesterday, he said, masked gunmen who he believed were members of Hamas stopped him on the way to the dentist and inspected his car.
“The situation is very fragile,” he said. “The weak party, Hamas, hasn’t been convinced to accept the strong party’s demands.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Adam Rasgon, Bilal Shbair and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad
Photographs by: Saher Alghorra
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES