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It’s almost over, the end is so close that I can practically feel the keys they’ve kept all these months sliding into the locks of their old homes, the doorknobs turning in their hands, the beds they’ll sink into for their first night of peaceful rest more than 15 months — own beds. Only a few more days.
Two nights before the first phase of the ceasefire in Gaza announcedLayan al-Mohtaseb, 15, dreamed of returning to her bedroom in Gaza City, cleaning it as she did before her family fled during the war.
“This time, it feels like we’re really going home,” she said.
This can only be true for those whose homes are still standing after months of destruction. And there is always the chance that fighting could resume after the six-week initial truce if talks on a permanent truce fail. But across Gaza, people dreamed of the first moments of peace, of the people they would embrace as soon as the truce came into force, graves would visit. They already knew that they would shed tears, tears that they did not know whether to attribute to joy or sadness.
If Wednesday night was for celebrating the news that a cease-fire agreement had been reached, the following days were for preparations. As Israel’s security cabinet met to vote on a cease-fire agreement and the release of hostages on Friday, Palestinians were looking for trucks they could hire to move their belongings back to northern Gaza, or vans, or even donkey carts; they packed up their tents, wondering where they would live if their houses were no longer there.
Fedaa al-Rayyes, 40, was already buying ingredients to make small festive sweets to welcome the end of the war. But the first thing she planned to do when the bombs and drones stopped was to look for relatives she hadn’t seen in months, find out who was still alive, and grieve for those who didn’t live to see this day.
“It’s impossible to describe this mixture of relief and sadness,” she said. “I am happy that we survived and grateful for the kind people who helped us. Still, I am deeply saddened – saddened by the relatives and friends we have lost and the neighborhood we will return to without them.”
There were also practical things to think about. She will remind her children to “stay away from anything that might still be dangerous or explosive,” she said — from all the unexploded ordnance littering Gaza that could continue to add to the war’s toll, one accidental explosion at a time, months or year come.
Most of Gaza’s population of more than two million people had to gather in tents and other people’s schools and apartments for most of the war, prompted by Israeli airstrikes and orders to evacuate from their homes or the earlier shelters they tried. Now they could think of nothing but going home. Even if those houses are damaged. Even if they are now nothing more than rubble and ashes.
Manal Silmi, 34, a psychologist with an international aid group, planned to go first to hug her mother and siblings and “cry, letting out all the pain we’ve been carrying these 15 months,” she said.
Then the journey home could begin. According to the agreement, people displaced from northern Gaza to the south will be allowed return on the seventh day after the cease-fire takes effect on Sunday. Her family was already looking for a large van to take all their tents and bedding back north. Her friends and the few relatives she left behind in Gaza City have already called, planning to meet them at the crossing that divides northern and southern Gaza.
“We will hug each other, we will cry and we will thank God again and again that we survived this war,” she said.
Al-Hassan al-Harazeen, 23, a college senior majoring in computer science, knew his family’s house in eastern Gaza was in ruins, he said. But he would still head straight there as soon as the ceasefire began.
He imagined himself spray-painting his family’s name on any brick that was still in one piece, imagining himself sitting on the rubble for a while, he said, “to embrace those broken stones and bricks as if they were a part of me. “
He would then visit the grave where his grandfather was buried at the beginning of the war to recite the opening verses of the Qur’an.
Even as mediators announced the deal on Wednesday, Israel was still heavily bombing Gaza. Two employees of Jamal Mortaja from the solar panel business he owned before the war were killed the day before. They will be in his thoughts, said Mr. Mortaja, 65, when he returned to Gaza to visit what remained of his home before checking out his shops at al-Ansar Roundabout.
And Raed al-Gharabli wanted to return to Gaza City, despite the destruction of his house, just to say goodbye before the rubble was removed. He wanted to walk around his neighborhood, Shuja’iyya, greeting neighbors who did so stuck it all these long months. He would carry his makeshift tent from the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah, where he fled with his family, and set it up next to the ruins of his home.
“I can’t wait to see this moment become a reality,” said Mr al-Gharabli, 48, a tailor. “If I could, I’d fly straight north and land on the ruins of my house.”
To speed things along, he said his family would leave some belongings with a neighbor in Deir al Balah, where they and other displaced people had come to trust and rely on people who were complete strangers at the start of the war.
There was even a part of them that was already nostalgic for the team, the camaraderie that had formed between them and their temporary neighbors.
After his home in the southern city of Khan Younis was destroyed, Ismail al-Sheikh, 39, a university lecturer, moved into a nearby tent, where he met two men in nearby tents. The new friends spent their evenings reminiscing about life before October 7, 2023, when the war began, and imagining out loud what would happen when the nightmare was over. What would they do? Where would they go?
For Mr. al-Sheikh, who taught at al-Aqsa University, the daydreams were nothing crazy. He just wanted his normal life, teaching, meeting friends at night at the Titanic restaurant in Khan Younis. The Titanic, which he heard had crashed into ruins.
Now, with the war drawing to a close, his new friends were about to return to Gaza City, where they were from.
“I will miss those gatherings deeply,” Mr. al-Sheikh said. “It’s really a mix of emotions — happiness to have them back, sadness to say goodbye, and hope for what lies ahead.”
