Shahd Raed Al Wahidi did not take to the streets this Wednesday to celebrate, as other Gazans did, finally seeing a horizon of hope after 15 months of suffering. I shared the illusion, but I was afraid. “Although we are in the camps [de desplazados]”It was dangerous,” he clarifies. Even more so at this time. Since the three mediating countries (Qatar, the United States and Egypt) announced the pact on Wednesday afternoon, the Israeli army has increased bombing in the Strip, killing 116 people as of this Friday, according to health authorities.
Shahd is 19 years old, he has lived since the start of the war – in October 2023 – in a tent near the home of relatives in Deir al Balah and, although the guns finally fall silent starting Sunday, as expected, His future is not at all promising. His family home, in Gaza City, is destroyed, like many others in a territory where 70% of the buildings have been partially or totally damaged, according to United Nations data. “I’m exhausted, but overall [el acuerdo de alto el fuego] “It’s almost finished,” he sums up optimistically in an exchange of messages on WhatsApp.
It is mixed with the fear of adding to the gloomy statistics of deaths, just now that it seems imminent. Another of the Gazans who has survived, Mohamed, summarizes this feeling in an audio message sent to this newspaper: “We are scared for these three days, until midnight on Sunday,” the exact moment when it is expected the entry into force of the ceasefire. “Right now, in addition, they are bombing a lot.”
Mohamed works at Al Awda, the only operational hospital in northern Gaza, and foresees “emergency days” as soon as the bombing stops. “Many injured people will arrive who have not been able to before, due to the destruction of the ambulances. that could not be treated or that no one dared to bring.”
The Israeli Government approved the agreement early this Saturday, which will come into force on Sunday. The bombing will then cease and Israeli troops will begin to withdraw from the populated areas of Gaza, in exchange for the release of the first Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
The hope that the attacks will stop soon makes the images of the last few hours more dramatic than usual. A video spread on social networks captures the atrocious moment in which a young man shakes and talks to the corpse of his sister with her face full of dust and blood, killed in a bombing in the Al Daray neighborhood, in the capital of Gaza. “The war is over! Lift, lift, Pull! The war is over, let’s go south [de Gaza]! Get up! Let’s leave the country, let’s leave! Get up, Hala!”, he tells her before breaking down sobbing.
Aboud Al Majaida, who lives in a tent, like tens of thousands of other Gazans, expressed a similar feeling in a video. “Everyone has an interest in the issue of the truce and the agreement, but at the same time the occupation [Israel] is carrying out intensive operations and massacres at this time […] The truce is a reason for happiness, but there are those who lose every day, even up to this moment […] Imagine, for example, that you lose your brother and an hour later a truce is declared.”
Many Gazans have long responded to the question “how are you?” with a phrase: “I am alive, thank God.” They are the ones who have overcome daily attacks and terrible conditions, with a humanitarian crisis deepening in recent months, while attention focused on Lebanon and Syria. 46,800 lives have been lost along the way, mostly minors and women, which is one in every 50 Gazans, according to the Ministry of Health of the Hamas Government in Gaza. An unknown number, estimated to be several thousand, are under the rubble.
A recent study in the scientific journal The Lancet estimates that the data from the Gazan health authorities—which Israel questions, although the UN agencies take it as a reference because in previous offensives they have ended up squaring up with subsequent independent investigations—. After comparing three different lists and extrapolating the nine-month results, he calculates that it is 69.65% higher. That is to say, the Israeli bombings have killed more than 70,000 people.
Feel the open wounds
“When we are done surviving and waiting for the war to end, we will begin to feel our open wounds,” Fatma Muhaisen, 22, says in WhatsApp messages. He feels that the announcement of the truce has brought him out of the apathy generated by the fight for survival, in which day-to-day life, for nearly 470 years, has consisted of obtaining food and water, and collecting scarce possessions and . His family, he says, has done it 11 times in these 15 months. The last one was three months ago, when he fled his house in the northern area of the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, in the capital of Gaza, with the last invasion of Jabalia, which ended up turning a space where they lived before the war into a wasteland. 200,000 people. Even the so-called humanitarian zone of Al Mawasi, where the displaced were urged to confine themselves to tents, has been bombed on several occasions.
“When you try to survive you don’t really feel sorry. And now that we are less stressed, the grief is beginning to lift, although there have also been tears of joy. It’s hard to believe it’s over, it’s really hard to believe it! […] But it is also a partial happiness. With all the death and destruction around us it’s like: is that it? Is it over? “Will we continue living this way?” he asks.
His plan for when the ceasefire comes into force and the skies are no longer threatening due to the passage of Israeli fighters is to return to his family home in the capital of Gaza, which he had to abandon with his parents at the beginning of the war and is “ severely damaged.” “We have to start removing the debris and cleaning it so we can live in it. And wait for our loved ones to return from the south… Hopefully, next week.”
