Every time ‘ceasefire efforts’ or ‘truce negotiations’ are announced, the same scene returns to the minds of Gaza’s residents: breaking news alerts; tense scrolling through social media, and conversations in markets, shelters, and cracked homes. Some people dare to hope for a moment of calm. Others brace for yet another turn in the same painful cycle.
Behind this initial reaction lie deeply-rooted and widely-shared sentiments that have been shaped by a long history of sporadic wars and temporary truces that – most often – lead to nothing but resetting the clock to zero.
Yousef
In a displacement shelter in western Gaza City, 47-year-old Yousef Radwan sits on a plastic chair outside a partially damaged classroom. Its courtyard had been hit in a recent Israeli airstrike. The father of five lost the shop he ran twice in previous bombings. He says his problem isn’t with the idea of a ceasefire itself, but with its nature. Yousef explains:
The moment we hear the word ‘ceasefire’, we start counting the days: ‘how long will it last?’ Honestly, we’ve memorized the script by now.
Every ceasefire that passes is just a prelude to something worse. Sometimes we return to find our homes destroyed, other times we are forced to flee again. The occupation uses the ceasefire to regroup and finish what it couldn’t in the first wave of bombings.
I’m one of those who have been displaced five times. Each time, we try to pick ourselves up and start living again. But whenever we hear about negotiations or a ceasefire, we understand it as just a pause in the fighting, not a solution. We want a real end to the suffering, not temporary relief.
Fadwa
Fadwa Hamad, a retired teacher who was displaced to the Mawaysi area of Khan Younis, explains that trust has been emptied of its meaning. Leaders’ statements no longer resonate with the people’s collective consciousness, which is now shaped by repeated losses. She tells me:
Every time we hear the word ‘negotiations,’ we relive our pain. Not because we oppose solutions, but because past experiences have taught us that there is almost always a price to pay – and it’s us who always pay it, not the leaders who make the statements.
The people in Gaza have come to understand political language – not out of education, but because of the immense pain. Each cycle of ceasefires began with a small hope and ended in a greater disaster. They witnessed the ceasefires of 2012, 2014, and 2021… all filled with promises but none brought security.
Trust has been lost because we realized that ceasefires are managed for the benefit of the occupation, to reorganize and reposition itself. As for the civilians, they return to their homes – if any walls are still standing – and after a few days, they find themselves packing their bags once again.
We’re not against peace. We just want real peace, not a temporary truce that ends with renewed bombing. We want to live, to plant, to work, to raise our children without fear. We’re tired of rebuilding everything, only to lose it all in seconds.
Sara
Sara Al-Ghoul, 29, is a university graduate who has been unemployed for five years. She echoes Fadwa’s feelings toward political truces and leaders’ rhetoric:
I’m not trying to sound dramatic, but every truce we’ve lived through was just a ‘time-out’-it never brought back electricity, never opened a crossing, and never gave us safety.
For people here, a ceasefire isn’t just about halting fire – it has to bring tangible change to daily life. […] If the truce doesn’t allow me to work, or move freely, then what’s the point? It just becomes the calm before the next storm.
Wael
In one of the many narrow alleys of Al-Shati Refugee Camp, the walls bear the marks of old shrapnel. For 38-year-old Wael Aqilan, and so many like him, talk of a ceasefire means little – because he’s never experienced peace:
In 2012, we said that’s it – this has to be the last time. But three years later, we were back to square one. In 2014, it was the worst bombing I’ve ever seen in my life. And still, they said it was a ‘long-term truce’ – it didn’t even last a year!
We’re not against calm. We’re against lies in the name of calm. If we ever felt, even once, that a ceasefire actually changed something real—we’d be the first to hold on to it.
We are a generation that has never known stability. War is the default. I’ve never lived through a real truce. All I know is that summer brings war, and winter is when we prepare for the next one.
Maha
Maha Al-Sayyed, a woman in her fifties who lost one of her sons in the 2014 bombing, speaks to me from the balcony of her home in Sheikh Radwan neighborhood. She points out that women in Gaza experience double the anxiety:
Every time they say ‘there’s a truce,’ we live between two fears: the fear that it won’t happen, and the fear that it will – and then suddenly break.
I’m a mother. I know that a truce means I can cook without terror, send my children out to play and wait for them without my heart trembling. But now we’ve even started to fear the silence, because we don’t know what comes after it.
Samer
A vendor working at a street kiosk after the Israeli military destroyed his original shop, Samer Shehadeh, 31, laces his thoughts with symbolic expression:
Our lives now run according to the timing of the ‘breaking news alert.’ Whenever a leader – American or otherwise – speaks about a ceasefire or promises of an upcoming agreement, everyone stops, goes silent, listens… and then we go back to our day as if nothing happened.
We want to believe there’s a genuine intention to end the war. But history has taught us that wars in Gaza don’t end with an agreement – they end with sudden silence… followed by nothing.
What a ceasefire means to Gaza
The people of Gaza do not respond to ceasefire talks like ordinary civilians in a conflict zone. They react as those who have lived through it all, all at once – as victim, observer, analyst, optimist, and the betrayed.
Ceasefires are no longer just breaking news alerts, they are recurring experiences etched into the fabric of daily life. Their meaning is written in the shape of homes that collapsed and were rebuilt, in the mothers who bid farewell to their sons at shelter doors, and in streets always poised to change their features once again.
Talks of a ceasefire this time – like every time – are neither fully embraced nor entirely rejected. Instead, they are met with a familiar sentiment, unique to Gaza: a blend of quiet hope and loud apprehension.
