Here in Gaza we hear the word “peace” constantly – even more often than we hear the roar of warplanes or the thuds of shelling. It appears on television screens, in the statements of world leaders, in promises repeated again and again. Every country claims to want peace for Palestinians. Yet have we ever lived it for a single day? The truth is that we have not.
We are now living under a ceasefire, or at least that is what the US and the rest of the world have been telling us. But in Gaza, we haven’t felt it at all. It was announced on 10 October, amid great celebrations in Sharm el-Sheikh. Since then, Israeli forces have killed more than 360 Palestinians, including about 70 children, in Gaza. Because of the explosions I keep hearing, I am still afraid to leave the house. We are trapped in an endless maze of waiting: for the suffering to stop, for our lives to begin again and above all, for the death to end.
While the world’s leaders discuss the “day after” and finalise their peace plans, proposing and deciding our fate, we remain in the depths of the unknown, drowning in the fear and confusion war has caused. My family and I are now renting a small, unsuitable apartment. Daily life is extremely difficult. Access to water is limited, cash is hard to obtain with no working ATMs and the streets are so badly destroyed that walking or driving feels dangerous. There is no electricity or reliable internet, and no sense of stability or safety.
I see families living in destroyed homes, with buildings above them at constant risk of collapse. They have no choice. All they want is a roof over their heads, even if it could fall at any second. And since it is December, with no homes left for us and our life confined to tents, some of us are literally submerged in winter water, in mud, in every sense of the word.
Along the newly created borders of Gaza, where Israel has taken even more of our land and homes, is a new invisible boundary they call the “yellow line”. On the east side of the line, houses are demolished every day, and people cannot sleep because of the intensity of the explosions and the smell of smoke. We hear stories that children are shot if they come near or cross the line that no one can see. At the start of December I visited relatives in Gaza City whose home is still standing, near the so-called yellow line. The house constantly shakes from artillery fire and what we call explosive robots – ground-based, remotely operated devices loaded with large amounts of explosivesthat are capable of destroying entire residential blocks. They keep the windows closed most of the time because of the smoke from nearby attacks, which they fear may come from phosphorus-based weapons.
We dream of having the peace and security that are rightfully ours, but that now seems to exist only in a fantasy. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, countries discuss giving it to us as if it were forbidden, as if we were not entitled to it. We long for the simple realities of safety: a home that won’t be destroyed, lovers who might meet again, dreams that could come true, nights without fear. Things most people elsewhere take for granted.
When I heard about the “ceasefire” in October, I felt happy and hopeful, believing it would mark the end of the war and the beginning of a new life filled with safety and peace. Yet here I am at the end of December, still waiting for any real change. While the terms of the ceasefire are delayed on the ground, tears are shed at night. I wait to see my fiance, my love, whom I have not seen for two full years because it has been too dangerous to move between the central Gaza Strip, where I lived, and the southern part, where he lived. He travelled to Egypt in April 2024 – and now he cannot enter again and I cannot leave. Like so many other things in this war, our hope has been delayed. I must wait longer to be with the person I love, in peace. This is the true torment of a Palestinian: waiting for the unknown and trying to hold on to hope. Sometimes it feels worse than death.
Benjamin Netanyahu said this month that the first phase of the ceasefire is near to completion. Unfortunately for Palestinians, none of it has translated into reality yet, and we remain excluded from the very negotiations that speak about our future without us. The beautiful Gaza we dream of returning to has gone. We look out and see rubble and suffering instead. The world and its constant meetings about our future have produced nothing that we can feel or touch.
We try to create a form of peace for ourselves, even if it is fragile or false. We hold on to hope, even when it feels thin, and search for brief moments of happiness to survive the deadly waiting. We try to rebuild a life out of ashes because, as the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish wrote: “We carry hope like an illness, and we feel everything deeply.” In the end, this hope is all we have to keep going, while the world debates peace from afar.