Lebanon announces ceasefire, but Palestinians in Gaza can only hope

In Jabalia for refugees in the northern Gaza Strip, Hajja Em Khalid listened to the news day and night on her small transistor radio – one of the few things she decided to take with her when she left home, displaced by the war.

Since the 1970s, traditional radio broadcast Em Khalid news about various Israeli crimes. He accompanied her during many wars that she witnessed. The radio connects her with the world.

Her five siblings and four her grandchildren were killed in December 2023 in Israel’s “belt of fire” – a term I grew up in Gaza that is the Palestinian version of “carpet bombing” or an intense series of airstrikes aimed at destroying local infrastructure.

“Israel’s announcements about progress in negotiations turned out to be a mirage.”

“I have been following the news obsessively since the beginning of the war,” she said. “Every time I had reason to hope that I would be able to hug my grandchildren again, Israel’s announcements of progress in the negotiations turned out to be a mirage.”

Israeli and Western leaders have said the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar could mark a turning point in Israel’s war. For example, the Biden administration has long described Sinwar as an obstacle to reaching a ceasefire agreement.

When Sinwar was killed, President Joe Biden said it was an “opportunity” for a ceasefire. However, at a press conference shortly after the assassination, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the fighting would continue: “The war, my dears, is not over yet.”

It was just the latest example of the Biden administration sending baseless signals that this brutal war was coming to an end.

The West’s misplaced optimism, even if it is just a show, has done no good to the Palestinians, who have largely themselves lost all reason to hope.

And although a ceasefire was announced between Israel and Lebanon on Tuesday evening – negotiated as Israel intensified its attacks on Beirut – there is no real hope of ending the genocidal war in Gaza.

As a Palestinian from Gaza, it has been painful to watch politicians sell false narratives of hope to my people over the past year. Western leaders illuminate us.

Em Khalid, for example, thought that the killing of Sinwar in October would end the attack on the besieged Gaza Strip – a view that was publicly promoted by US officials.

She said, “This is what Israel promised several times.”

In the end, the result was the same: no agreement. It seems that a ceasefire may work even for Lebanon, but the Palestinians in Gaza are left with nothing but hope.

My unrealized hopes

At the beginning of the Israeli ground offensive, I watched from my home in the north as thousands of leaflets fell from Israeli planes. They gave orders for us to evacuate to the so-called “safe zones” in the south.

On October 9, 2023, before we could obey orders, Israeli fighter jets flew overhead and bombed our densely populated neighborhood.

As a result of the bombing, my arm was seriously injured. My mother, who worked at the UN, and my sister, who was a physiotherapist, died.

My father, my siblings and I fled south. We thought we would be gone for a few days and then we could go home.

Like thousands of displaced families in southern Gaza, we moved into a makeshift tent in November 2023 – it was cold in the winter and scorching hot in the summer.

A few days later, when I suggested to my father that I would add shelves to our tent to make it more hospitable, my father reacted with indignation. “Are you crazy, Ahmad?” – he admonished me. “It’s only a matter of time. We’ll be back in a few days.”

We lived in constant fear that history would repeat itself, that another Nakba was about to happen. Little did we know that the horrors we would have to tell about the present would overshadow those from the past.

I chose the only road out of Gaza. Now it’s blocked. My family remains trapped.

We longed to return to the place where our house once stood, especially to visit the graves of my mother and sister. The task may turn out to be tragically impossible: the Israeli military has reportedly unearthed and moved many bodies from cemeteries in Jabalia.

Days in tents turned into months. At the beginning of March, at my father’s encouragement, I left Gaza. My injured shoulder required surgery and Gases health infrastructure decimatedneeded to travel to Egypt.

I chose the only road out of Gaza. Now it’s blocked. My family remains trapped, with no end to the war in sight.

No one in Gaza knows whether they will be reunited with their family members abroad. I keep asking myself, “When will I embrace my dad and siblings again?” I follow the news of each round of ceasefire talks only to have my hopes dashed when they inevitably lead nowhere.

The narratives presented by American politicians and the media repeat, contrary to all evidence, Israeli claims about limits to their war efforts.

In a November 2023 interview with Fox News, Netanyahu said: “We do not seek to conquer Gaza, we do not seek to occupy Gaza, and we do not seek to rule Gaza.”

The current siege of northern Gaza, along with a number of other military actions, contradicts his words.

“I’m not sure it’ll ever get done.”

When Israel invaded Rafah in May, Netanyahu promised a “limited” operation against Hamas militants. At that time it was the White House projects optimism on negotiations in Cairo between Israel and Hamas; American officials took Israel at its word.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said: “Our Israeli counterparts told us that this operation… was limited and intended to cut off Hamas’ ability to smuggle weapons and funds into Gaza.”

Instead of a targeted, limited campaign, devastating massacres followed.

Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city and a once-promised “safe zone”, has been transformed into a dusty ghost town.

“In Gaza, we thought that a ground offensive in Rafah would end the war because that’s what Israel said all over the world,” Yosef, a 26-year-old university lecturer from Rafah, told me recently by phone. Josef currently lives in a makeshift tent in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.

“The occupation authorities in Israel torment us with optimism.”

“The occupation authorities in Israel torment us with optimism,” he said. “They used hope to kill us. Now hope is just another deadly tool that Israel is using against humanity in Gaza.”

Josef added: “It’s more disgusting than their murder bombs, because you have to die often, not just once!”

The promises continued to flow from Rafah. In August, Biden touted an impending ceasefire: “We’re closer than ever.” However, according to reports at the time, Israel did not make any reasonable concessions that would lead to an agreement. Senior Hamas official he said BBC that there was no progress and that mediators were “selling illusions”.

Even U.S. officials admitted that optimism about an imminent ceasefire was misplaced. “No agreement is imminent,” says one US official, speaking anonymously he said reporters in September. “I’m not sure it will ever be done.”

The agony of loss

The Israeli military launched a ground attack on southern Lebanon in early October, again using the lie that it would be a precision operation against Hezbollah fighters. The “precision” operation included strikes in densely populated areas and indiscriminate explosions With booby trap electronics, resulting in the death of over 3,500 Lebanese.

Only after months of violence and destruction in Lebanon was a ceasefire agreement reached on Tuesday; went into effect on Wednesday morning. In the final hours of negotiations, Israel intensified rocket attacks on the heart of Beirut.

When I heard about the impending ceasefire in Lebanon, I was reminded of Israel’s past deadly escalations in the Gaza Strip in 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2021 – just before interim ceasefires came into force. The ceasefire brought a feeling of euphoria and relief that we had survived. The pause in slaughter, however, brought its own tribulations: a reckoning with mass destruction and loss.

In the case of today’s Palestinians in Gaza, our feelings are once again conflicted. We feel relief for the people of Lebanon who have suffered violence because of Gaza. We are also devastated by the fact that we are still being murdered. The ceasefire in Lebanon is a reminder that we are still treated as subhumans.

Following the victory of President-elect Donald Trump, who in his campaign promised to bring lasting peace to the Middle East, some Palestinians I spoke to once again expressed hope for an end to the genocide. Trump, however, is Netanyahu’s closest political ally and friend.

Palestinians like me, waiting in fear for our loved ones, find ourselves in another state of terrifying uncertainty.

We cannot trust Israeli or American leaders when they talk about a ceasefire, and yet we still yearn for the coming of our own day, to experience those last hours before a ceasefire when we could truly imagine the end of the deadliest year in our recent history.