For two years, the Middle East has been a portrait of grief — a relentless cycle of vengeance, siege and rubble. Now, as a tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Hamas holds, the world waits in collective breath. The images are almost biblical: hostages emerging from captivity after 737 days, Gaza’s streets choked with aid trucks, and exhausted families on both sides counting the living and the dead. The latest agreement — involving the release of 48 hostages, hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and an unprecedented surge of humanitarian aid — offers a glimpse of respite. Yet it is also a reminder of how little has been resolved. Behind every gesture of peace stands the shadow of political calculation, and beneath every truce lies the buried anguish of unhealed wounds.
The scale of loss is staggering. Over 67,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, when Hamas-led militants carried out a brutal assault that left 1,200 Israelis dead and hundreds taken hostage. The Israeli counter-offensive flattened entire neighbourhoods, turning Gaza into a graveyard of concrete and hunger. Now, humanitarian agencies are preparing for one of the largest aid operations in recent memory — an effort to feed a population half-starved and wholly displaced. The entry of 400 trucks from Egypt, expected to rise to 600 per day, marks a lifeline for a people on the edge of famine. Yet relief is not redemption. Gaza’s devastation is not just physical; it is institutional. Hospitals, schools and water systems have collapsed, and with them, the basic fabric of civic life. No ceasefire document can rebuild trust between a state and a stateless people, nor can it erase the trauma of two years of relentless bombardment and deprivation.
Monday’s expected release of 20 surviving hostages and hundreds of Palestinian detainees will test the moral stamina of both societies. For Israel, the return of its citizens will stir relief and rage in equal measure — relief that some have survived, and rage that the war that promised retribution now demands restraint. For Palestinians, the release of prisoners, many held without charge, will bring fleeting joy, even as Gaza’s ruins remain a testament to the price of militancy and isolation. Into this fraught atmosphere arrives U.S. President Donald Trump, seeking to claim credit for the ceasefire he helped broker and to convene a symbolic “peace summit” in Egypt. His visit will be brief, but the symbolism is potent: Washington reasserting its relevance in a region where its influence has waned. Yet the task before all mediators — Arab, American or European — is immense. Israel demands that Hamas disarm. Hamas insists that Israeli troops withdraw completely. Neither condition seems immediately attainable, and without political architecture to sustain it, the ceasefire risks crumbling under the weight of competing triumphalism.
This fragile peace may yet hold, if only because exhaustion has replaced zeal on both sides. Gaza’s ruins and Israel’s grief share a weary symmetry — two peoples trapped in the geometry of revenge. The return of hostages and prisoners, the trickle of aid, the tentative diplomacy: all are gestures toward normalcy, but none amount to resolution. The real challenge lies in what comes after — governance in Gaza, accountability for war crimes, and the moral courage to envision coexistence beyond the rhetoric of annihilation. For now, the ceasefire offers only the silence between storms. Whether it becomes the foundation for peace or just another pause before renewed devastation will depend not on promises from podiums, but on the willingness of leaders to see humanity beyond flags. The world has seen too many ceasefires fade into smoke. The people of Gaza and Israel deserve more than another truce — they deserve an ending.