As truce tightens, Gazans and Israelis express skepticism

As a truce was reached Sunday in Gaza, potentially ending the longest and deadliest war in a century of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, two men used the same metaphor to describe how they feel.

“The weight on my chest has been lifted,” said Ziad Obeid, a Gaza serviceman displaced several times during the war. “We survived.”

“The rock on my heart has been removed,” said Dov Weissglas, a former Israeli politician. “We want to see the hostages at home, period.”

Both men also had a “but”.

Mr. Obeid has not seen his damaged home in northern Gaza for over a year. How bad, he wondered, is the damage? Who will rebuild a decimated Gaza? And will Hamas still be managed?

Mr. Weissglas worried about the conditions of the hostages who will be released gradually in the coming weeks from the wet quarters in the territory. And he made a grimace of exchanging for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, many of them taking their lives for attacks on Israel. “There is relief,” he said, “wrapped in caution, fear and concern.”

It was an apt summation of the mood on both sides of the divide on Sunday, as Israelis and Palestinians expressed feelings of elation tinged with doubt.

For the Palestinians, the truce is intended to provide at least six weeks without strikes in Gaza. That offers a window for Gazans to take tentative first steps towards reconstruction; to find relatives still buried in the rubble; and come to terms with the killing of more than 45,000 people, civilians and combatants, whose bodies have already been counted by the Gaza health authorities. Scenes of joy were broadcast on Sunday from all over the territory, as rescue workers threw confetti; the crowd danced and sang among the ruins; and the journalists symbolically removed their old jackets.

For the Israelis, the deal allows for the gradual release of at least 33 of the hostages captured during Hamas’ incursion into Israel on October 7, 2023 – an attack that killed up to 1,200 people and prompted the Israel’s devastating 15-month response. For hostages released alive, this means freedom after 470 days of captivity. For Israelis in general, many of them wracked by some form of survivor’s guilt, it offers a qualified catharsis. In an embodiment of that mood, friends of one of the first three hostages freed on Sunday were filmed jumping for joy after hearing the news of their freedom.

But the details of the deal between Israel and Hamas mean both sides still have considerable uncertainty about how the next six weeks will play out, let alone whether the tentative arrangement will later become permanent. Even the first phase started hours late on Sunday morning, amid disputes over which hostages would be released in the afternoon. In that time, according to Gaza authorities, Israeli strikes have killed and wounded even more people.

For now, Israel still controls large tracts of Gaza and has yet to agree to a full withdrawal, preventing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, like Mr. Obeid, from returning home to northern Gaza. It remains to be seen whether Israeli troops will ever leave entirely.

“What happens after 42 days?” Mr. Weissglas said. “No one knows.”

The Palestinians are still unclear about the fates of several thousand Gazans held incommunicado during the war and who may not be released during the upcoming exchanges. Reema Diab, a housewife in central Gaza, still has no way of locating her husband, a horse trainer, who she said was taken to Israel for questioning in December 2023 and never heard from.

“I am relieved that the bloodshed has come to an end, but my heart aches,” Ms Diab said. “His absence is unimaginable.”

Across the border, Israeli columnists struck a somber tone, with one, Ben Caspit, describing a mix of joy and sadness, “inextricably intertwined.” He wrote that Sunday was a day of reckoning, not celebration, and emphasized that Israel now needs to come to terms with the scale of its failure on October 7, 2023.

“Let us be silent for a moment, study our conscience, suffer the disaster, think of those who were killed and murdered and burned and raped and kidnapped,” Mr. Caspit wrote in Maariv, a right-wing newspaper. daily newspaper.

Israelis also already feared for the fate of some 65 hostages who could not be released from Gaza if the deal collapsed after six weeks. Likewise, there was widespread fear that the initial 33 hostages who were released over the next 42 days could be emotionally or physically scarred, or even dead. And Israelis generally lamented that the freedom of the hostages would be obtained in exchange for Palestinian detainees, including some convicted of major terrorist attacks such as teenagers who have never been charged.

Palestinians see the soon-to-be-released detainees as freedom fighters and political prisoners. For Israelis, it will be a psychological blow to see “this stream of killers being released,” Mr. Weissglas said.

Videos of Hamas fighters emerging triumphantly from hiding was also a punch in the face for Israelis, who had hoped the war would completely destroy the group’s military capabilities. For many Gazans, it was a spectacle to be celebrated, but for others, it was a reminder of the lingering uncertainty about the future government of Gaza.

Mr Obeid works for the Palestinian Authority, which lost power to Hamas in Gaza 18 years ago, but still employs some Gazan civil servants, including Mr Obeid, and now hopes to play a bigger role in Gaza after the war Mr Obeid said he had been liaising in recent days with heads of authorities in the West Bank to plan potential clean-up and reconstruction operations in Gaza. It is unclear, he said, whether these efforts will be possible with Hamas still in charge during the next six weeks, and perhaps even beyond.

It is not yet clear when Israel will allow Mr. Obeid, who fled to Egypt last year after being moved three times to Gaza, to return home.

But all that can be addressed in time, Mr. Obeid said.

For now, he said, “I can breathe oxygen again.”

Bilal Shbair contributed report from Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, and Aaron Boxerman from Jerusalem.