Palestinians hear life again after 737 days of war. Can it last?

For the first time in 737 days, journalist Ahmed Dremly walks along the shore on Gaza’s seafront road, trying to inventory the sounds returning to his life. For a long time, he had forgotten the roar of the Mediterranean waves. Wiam al-Masri, a 24-year-old Palestinian mother living in Gaza’s al-Mawasi locality, is also clearly hearing the cries of her two-month-old son Samih for the first time.

For two years, the sounds of surf and even babies crying had been muzzled by the unending buzz of Israeli drones and bombers, and by blasts, shrieks, and the wails of the injured. The citizens are relearning natural sounds that make life.

After Israel and Hamas signed a peace document in the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh, just 300 kilometres away, the screams of incoming missiles or the electric rasp of a quadcopter searching for movement, which had become a daily feature of the lives of Palestinians, have stopped. Before the war began in October 2023, Dremly used to walk along the beach. “The drones erased all of that. You forget how waves sound,” he said, pausing to listen as a small set broke against the shattered promenade. “For two years, the sea was background noise under the buzzing.”

Speaking to Frontline from Gaza, Wiam said that this calm was a blessing for those who have listened to death’s roar for two years. It will be hard for anyone living outside to understand what it means. “The worst were the quadcopters,” she said. “Once, one hovered right above our tent. You cannot hear anything else. It is a kind of psychological war to break you.” She pulled Samih close. “Now I hear birds in the palms. I hear my child.”

Ceasefire an interval

The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas—billed as “phase one” of a 20-point plan pushed by US President Donald Trump—halted most air and artillery strikes and ordered Israeli troops to pull back to agreed lines inside the Strip. Experts say it is not peace. It is not even a comprehensive plan. But it is an interval, and in Gaza an interval is sound: a kettle boiling, gulls screaming at fishermen, babies crying, the clink of a teacup on a saucer.

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Far to the north, Nizar Daghmash, the 56-year-old head of the Daghmash family council, stood before the wreck of his house in Gaza City, the concrete shell still upright, just as if bulldozed into grief, while everything around it lay in mounds. “As you can see, the scene speaks for itself,” he told a local outlet. “The stone, as a stone, has no material value to us. But the emotional value—these stones, we placed them one by one, me, my father, my brothers, my sisters. A flood of memories runs through my mind now—not about the stones but because this house represents our history.”

By late afternoon, Al-Rashid Road along the coast was packed. Men, women and children clung to trucks, bicycles and motorbikes. Many walked with nothing in their hands, afraid to hope for more than the right to move. In Gaza City, people like Omar Junaid arrived to find not neighbourhoods but moonscapes. “Zarqah, Al-Nazha, Al-Ghubari, Jabaliya al-Balad—all neighbourhoods wiped out,” he said.

The known dead and the unknown

The toll frames every conversation: more than 67,000 dead and 169,000 wounded in two years, according to Gaza’s health authorities; unknown thousands still beneath ruins. Even as the truce took hold, civil defence officials were still recovering bodies from beneath the rubble.

The Israeli army’s pullback left it in control of roughly half the Strip, and commanders warned civilians to keep away from troops, buffer zones, and the sea. “It is highly dangerous to approach the Rafah Crossing, the Philadelphia corridor, and areas where forces are stationed,” one spokesman said in a string of warnings that sounded less like public safety and more like a reminder of who still holds the perimeter.

In a camp in northern al-Mawasi, Tawfiq al-Najili supervised the distribution of a pot of rice donated by a local charity. Like many cooks in war, he had learned to measure suffering by sound.

Palestinians return to their neighbourhoods in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip following Israeli forces’ withdrawal from the area, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, on October 11. | Photo Credit: Ramadan Abed/Reuters

“When the ladle hits the bottom of the pot,” he said, “I know there are families who will not eat tonight.” He scraped the last grains into a bowl for a boy who clung to his leg. “The war forced many sounds on us—jets and bombs, yes. But also empty pots and children crying from hunger. I pray never to hear those sounds again.”

Food and relief

For now, aid agencies say up to 600 trucks of food and relief could enter daily once all crossings reopen under the agreement. That promise sits next to other numbers. At least 463 people—157 of them children—died of starvation and malnutrition during Israel’s siege, according to local health records. Cropland is largely inaccessible. Few schools stand intact. Every university has been damaged or destroyed. Ninety-five per cent of Gaza’s people have been displaced, most more than once. A ceasefire can lower the volume, but it cannot cook a meal.

At 73, Ahmed al-Hissi is repairing a fishing net and teasing his sons and grandchildren that he would need time to relearn the sounds of peace. He lost a son, Khaled, to a naval shelling near Gaza’s port in November 2023; Khaled’s wife, Thuraya, died days later when a neighbouring building was hit. Three of their children survived because they had been on the first floor. “Sometimes at night we jumped out of bed from the blast,” he said. “We hugged the children as they shook. The sounds were omens of death. That is why today feels unreal.” He looked at the water. “Tomorrow I will try to fish. We will hear gulls and the vendors at Beach Camp again, not tanks. Gaza is moving from the sounds of death to the sounds of life.”

Daily life and dangers

Many families returned north only to pitch tents in the shadows of their old buildings, wary of booby-trapped rubble and the thousands of unexploded munitions that the police have warned about. In practical terms, it means daily life is a field of dangers: a child kicking a rusted fin screw, a scavenger tugging at tangled rebar and striking a fuse. Abdel Qader Sabbah, a videographer, filmed families walking along Al-Rashid and posted the footage with simple captions. They carried babies and cats, water jugs and folded blankets, a teapot wrapped in cloth.

“We fled under fire wearing only this robe,” Nizar Daghmash said, gesturing to himself. “We didn’t take a single item. There’s nothing left for them to destroy. Gaza has been annihilated completely.” What people found varied by street. Some blocks had one or two buildings standing like teeth, blackened and cracked, the rest scraped flat. Elsewhere, every structure still stood in outline but was uninhabitable—slabs dropped, stairwells twisted, walls peeled back like tin.

“We came back to our homes to explore what had become of them, and found that ruin surrounded everything,” said Saed Abdel Aal, sitting on rubble and staring at an address he still called by its old name. “Nothing remains for us except memories.” He counted what is gone—neighbourhoods, sanitation systems, electricity, the ordinary bureaucracy that makes a city work. “There is nothing here that can be called life,” he said. “We remain alive for the sake of survival—nothing more.”

The ceasefire’s architecture is simple on paper and labyrinthine in practice. Hamas has to release Israeli captives, with the understanding that recovering the bodies of those who died may take longer. Israel is to release nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners—about 250 serving sentences and roughly 1,700 detained from Gaza during the war. Israel holds some 11,000 Palestinians in detention centres.

Trump’s plan to end the war

The peace document signed by Israel, Hamas, and mediators is part of a larger package the Trump administration has touted as a path to end the war. The plan envisions a phased Israeli withdrawal, an international stabilisation force to take over security duties, and a civilian administration managing Gaza during a transition.

In Ankara, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan flatly said that any “solution after the ceasefire” cannot return Gaza to conditions that existed before October 7, 2023, arguing that the blockade and economic collapse were themselves causes of war. He said Türkiye would help monitor compliance on the ground along with the US, Qatar, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and others. “The agreement’s first phase has four main goals. Türkiye will monitor the ceasefire on the ground.”

From Istanbul, the foreign policy scholar Remzi Çetin told the Cumhuriyet daily that the current arrangement is different from earlier, shorter truces. “The West wants the Atlantic alliance’s full attention on the Ukraine front,” he said, and predicted that any attempt by Israeli hard-right Ministers to undermine the deal will confront not only Washington but a coalition of regional states. “It no longer seems possible for this human tragedy in Gaza to continue.”

Sceptics will note that tragedies do not seek permission. They grow in the cracks between what is promised and what is done.

Back story behind truce

Diplomats sketch a back story that reads like a screenplay. After an Israeli strike in Doha targeted Hamas leaders in September, Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al Thani received an awkward phone call from Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu on September 29, relaying a US-scripted apology. The call took place in the presence of Trump from his Oval Office in the White House.

Officials say this gesture gave mediators, who had otherwise lost hope of any breakthrough, some leverage. Steve Witkoff, the White House’s special envoy, and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner hurriedly assembled a 20-point plan by pulling from older proposals and wrapping them in a guarantee that Trump could sell to Israel’s hawks. A proposal had been shared with Arab and Islamic leaders on September 23. But it needed some tweaking to address Israeli concerns.

Mediators from Qatar, Egypt, and Türkiye travelled to Sharm el-Sheikh. Hamas signalled that it could accept parts of the deal, but baulked at the “day after”. The Americans later separated the hostage release from later political questions and told both sides what they needed to hear: the President will enforce good conduct. Turkiye and Saudi Arabia guaranteed Hamas that they would ensure that Israel would not reoccupy Gaza.

US President Donald Trump listens as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, on October 13, in Jerusalem. | Photo Credit: Evan Vucci/AP

Inside Israel, the political theatre matched the diplomatic choreography. Witkoff and Kushner, surprise guests at a Cabinet meeting, argued for the deal; Ministers applauded; hardliners objected; the Cabinet nonetheless ratified the first phase shortly after midnight.

“People are relieved,” a senior Trump aide briefed reporters. “There’s real fear about what happens next. Will Gaza again pose a threat?” To manage the next steps, US Central Command is preparing a task force outside Gaza to support what the plan calls an International Stabilisation Force. Countries have yet to be named in public. Indonesia has offered troops. Others are being courted.

Hamas and Gaza

The toughest piece is not the choreography. It is consent. Hamas says that it will not govern Gaza after the war, which is an essential element of the agreement. But observers say that it will remain a social force, and no plan can wish it away.

Earlier this year, in March, credible sources within Hamas had told Frontline that they were ready to be sidelined if a credible administration took over Gaza and the West Bank. An agreement signed on July 23, 2024, by 14 different Palestinian factions, including Fatah and Hamas, as part of the reconciliation process in Beijing, had mentioned working for a joint alternative leadership. Marwan Barghouti, a popular secular Fatah leader imprisoned by Israel since 2002, had emerged as a leading contender to replace Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestine Authority.

In the short-lived ceasefire period in January, when Hamas shared a list of Palestinian prisoners to be released by Israel, Barghouti was placed at the top. But Hamas officials claim that Abbas personally intervened to prevent Barghouti’s release, urging Israeli authorities to maintain a tough stance.

“Abbas even suggested that if Barghouti were to be freed, he should be deported and barred from returning to the West Bank,” the official claimed. Barghouti’s wife, Fadwa Al Barghouti, has also confirmed this to Frontline, highlighting the long-standing efforts to keep her husband imprisoned.

For Palestinians, both Islamists and secularists, Barghouti is seen as a unifying figure, a possible “Palestinian Mandela”. His release would almost certainly revitalise Palestinian political aspirations and could reshape the political landscape of Palestine. Netanyahu tells his base he will “demilitarise Gaza”, also warning that if it is not done “the easy way”, it will be done “the hard way”. Palestinians ask who among them will be empowered to reconstruct neighbourhoods and reopen universities while Israel still controls borders, airspace, and coast. Every answer triggers another question: a cascade of ifs in a place where the last two years have made conditions conditional on the next strike.

The deal and other issues

The current deal, while aiming to exchange captives and prisoners, has left much for diplomats and mediators to consider: issues such as disarmament, governance, reconstruction finance, and justice. The ceasefire has created ripples beyond Gaza. Hezbollah, which traded fire with Israel across the Lebanese border, has signalled interest in cooling tensions with Saudi Arabia, calling for “a new page” and insisting that its weapons point only at Israel.

In Yemen, the Houthis’ movement indicated that it would halt attacks on Israeli-linked shipping as long as Israel respects the truce in Gaza. Analysts argue that the Red Sea attacks gave the Houthis a domestic and international narrative boost—resistance without direct negotiation—and that a pause allows them to consolidate gains. In every case, Gaza remains the central symbol: a yardstick by which regional actors measure legitimacy.

The Trump plan also reaches beyond Gaza. Its backers hint at expanding the Abraham Accords if the ceasefire takes root, an ambition that has survived two years of war by mutating.

In Gaza, people have learned to take their measurements of history in human terms. They also know that politics can snatch back what it grants. Palestinians wait to see if all the political developments translate into the things that define life: safe streets, a school that opens, a clinic that carries insulin for mothers who need an evening walk, a university that prints exam schedules, a port that sends boats out in the dawn.

Experts say a ceasefire is not a solution. It is an opportunity to make it possible. It will be judged less by what is written into its annexes than by what is heard in its quiet: the return of ordinary noise, the stubborn music of people living.

Solution for a lasting peace

For a lasting peace, there are five requirements. First, relief. If aid really flows at the scale promised, hunger can be pushed back. That requires routes to stay open, crossings to operate, a deconfliction mechanism that works, and clear rules so a truck is not a target. It also requires money for fuel and salaries so hospitals can run and staff can return. Without this, silence becomes starvation, not peace.

Second, the ability to return. People will try to go home even if home is a hazard. Clearing unexploded ordnance will take months, maybe years. The international force—if it materialises must enable safe movement and protect civilians as they rebuild. Anything less will look like a new occupation with better PR.

Third, justice. Prisoner releases will be celebrated in Jenin and Rafah alike; families of Israeli captives will breathe again. But justice also lives in courtrooms and fact-finding missions. War crimes allegations, from the levelling of residential blocks to the starvation siege, will not vanish because politicians prefer the word “closure”. A durable peace will require a reckoning that people can recognise as real.

Fourth, governance. If Hamas steps back from formal rule but retains influence, and if the Palestinian Authority lacks legitimacy, who signs the permits to rebuild an apartment? Who hires teachers? Who polices a street when a family argument spirals? Technical answers will be offered. They will fail without political spine and local ownership.

At the “Hostages Square” in Tel Aviv, awaiting the return of Israeli hostages who have been held in Gaza since the deadly October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, as part of a prisoner-hostage swap and a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, on October 13. | Photo Credit: RONEN ZVULUN/REUTERS

Fifth, guarantees. No family will stack cinder blocks into a new wall if they think a jet can erase their work next month. No lender will finance a factory if the border can close on a Minister’s whim. Guarantees—legal, military, and economic—are the only tools that can convert a pause into a future. If the US, Europe, Türkiye, Qatar, and Egypt cannot produce them, they should say so plainly and stop pretending spreadsheets are substitutes.

Traumatised families

For many families, the war’s loudest moments are the ones that took their people. Wiam still hears the blast that killed six of her siblings, her father’s wife, and a niece as she stood outside an aunt’s home 36 days into the war.

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“A massacre in every sense,” she said. Her twin, Wisam, was injured. She now plays Quran recitations to calm Samih and herself. “Every sound meant death,” she said. “Imagine living surrounded by the noise of destruction—you feel death breathing beside you.” The truce is an inhalation. She does not yet dare to call it a breath. In every shelter, there is a story like this; in every story, the sound cue is different. For some, it is the whistle that comes before impact. For others, it is the clatter of shutters from a shock wave or the barking of dogs who learned to recognise the arc of artillery.

For Tawfiq, it is a ladle on an empty pot. For Ahmed al-Hissi, it is the frightened cry of a grandchild who now trembles when anyone claps. For Nizar, it is the silence of a house that remembers his father’s hands. Wars leave debris; they also leave echoes. Ceasefires erase neither.

As dusk fell, the tents at al-Mawasi glowed with phone screens and cooking fires. Someone down the path had a radio low, a presenter reading names of crossings that might open and of trucks queued on roads that lead toward Rafah. The sea kept its own counsel, steady and unargumentative, and the wind quickened in the palms. Wiam tucked Samih beneath her shawl and listened again, as if to memorise the pattern. Beyond the camp, a generator coughed, then steadied into a hum. It was not the old buzzing. It was an ordinary machine making ordinary noise.

A ceasefire cannot bring back the dead or reassemble a city from dust. It cannot promise that leaders far away will choose wisdom over convenience tomorrow. But it can offer a brief chance to hear what survival sounds like when it is not being drowned out—the small chorus that begins any honest reconstruction: a baby’s breath, a kettle’s whistle, a crowd on a road walking home.

Iftikhar Gilani is an Indian journalist based in Ankara.