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Joy, burdened by an overwhelming sense of loss, captures the emotional tone in Gaza after the ceasefire was declared. Many Gazans believe that the end of the war is far from the end of Gaza’s struggles — a reality Nour, a father of two, referred to as “Gaza’s eternal misery.”

Once the ceasefire takes effect on Sunday 19 January, Nour will begin packing his tent to return to his partially destroyed home in Gaza City. "Despite all the pain and destruction, we are still standing," he said.

He remains hopeful, convinced that not everything is lost. In his view, Israel has failed to achieve its war objectives, particularly its aim of forcing Gazans to leave the Strip for Egypt.

When the bombing began on October 7, 2023, Israel ordered Gazans to head south. As these 'evacuation orders' intensified, so did suspicions that Israel intended to force Gaza’s population out of the Strip — mirroring what was done to their ancestors 76 years ago during the Nakba.

The Israeli government initially dismissed these 'claims', much like Ben-Gurion denied the existence of Plan Dalet (D), which orchestrated the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948.

When expelling the entire population proved unsuccessful and Egypt sealed its borders, Tel Aviv shifted to a strategy of partially clearing Northern Gaza, starting with Jabalia. The success of the so-called Generals’ Plan would have enabled the annexation of Northern Gaza and the reconstruction of settlements, fulfilling the ambitions of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Despite the staggering level of destruction, resistance persisted, and most civilians either manoeuvered the Israeli army or remained trapped in their homes instead of moving south as ordered. Those who were caught were forced out of their neighbourhoods by tanks or killed.

The ceasefire exposed the impracticality, if not the duplicity, of Netanyahu’s stated war objectives — eliminating Hamas, ending its rule, and retrieving all captives. Repeatedly, including at the US Congress in July 2024, the Israeli prime minister stressed, "The war in Gaza could end tomorrow if Hamas surrenders, disarms, and returns all the hostages."

Netanyahu promoted the concept of "total victory," which he argued required reshaping post-war Gaza — or what remained habitable —in ways that served Israel’s interests. In May 2024, Netanyahu explicitly the idea of the Palestinian Authority taking control of Gaza in place of Hamas after the war.

To the same effect, Netanyahu made no secret of his intention to stay indefinitely in parts of Gaza. That included the Netzarim Corridor, separating southern and northern Gaza and stopping people returning to the north. The other is the Philadelphia Corridor on the Egypt-Gaza border, citing Israeli existential security concerns tied to the area.

Losing hearts and minds

The ceasefire, nonetheless, came to slaughter almost all of Netanyahu’s sacred cows.

Hamas bore heavy casualties, but it is far from defeat, despite Israel’s intense military pressure. The movement changed its tactics to small but precise attacks on the Israeli army in areas Israel declared — repeatedly — ‘cleansed’ from fighters.

In the razed-to-the-ground Northern Gaza — Jabalia and Beit Hanoun in particular — and mere hours before the declaration of the ceasefire, soldiers were killed.

The frequency of attacks in the past weeks is seemingly as intense as at the beginning of the war.

The US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken "admitted" that Hamas has recruited as many fighters as it has lost. To him, this is "a recipe for an enduring insurgency and perpetual war."

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It means that Israel exhausted all of its military options. And, by turning Gaza into a society of bereavement and orphans, it triggered a further rebellion, not out of allegiance to Hamas or any other armed group, but for personal revenge and nationalistic goals.

Since Hamas was and still is operational, Israel’s retrieval of its captives was a fiasco. The military pressure, instead, killed Israeli captives, alongside thousands of Palestinian civilians.

Additionally, Israel assessed that keeping a permanent presence in Netzarim would perpetuate Palestinian displacement. When displaced Gazans start flocking back to their homes in north Gaza as per the ceasefire terms, it will be the first time that a Palestinian displacement by Israel has been reversed.

The ceasefire granted Hamas what it wanted at the outset: exchange of prisoners, Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and the return of the displaced to their homes in northern Gaza.

More importantly, the agreement between Hamas and Israel came as further proof that if the United States wanted to stop the Gaza slaughter, it would have done so on day one. President-elect Donald Trump, his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, reportedly pressured Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire.

For more than a year, the Biden administration paid lip service to ceasefire deals but did very little to sway Netanyahu.

Instead, it Israel since October 7, 2023, more than 600 air and sea shipments of weapons, an average of 150 tonnes of equipment per day. That exceeds the annual military budget of some European countries.

As of January 2025, days before the end of his term, Biden signed a $8 billion arms shipment to Israel.Ìę

“Genocidal Joe is hardly a slogan. The same applies to Blinken, Sullivan, and Kirby, they are all elbow-deep in our deaths,” Nour said.Ìę

Palestinians take comfort in the fact that, despite the unimaginable loss, Israel’s unbridled barbarity mustered the international public opinion for Palestine. The slaughter set in motion an international movement to bring Israeli war criminals to justice, including Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

Rebuilding Gaza's spirit

Murad, a bereaved father and a former teacher from Jabalia now living in a tent in the town of Deir al-Balah, told me that “the end of the war will leave room to collect more evidence to continue the ‘legal hunting’ of Israel’s war criminals.”

He reminded me that "once upon a time, the Jews were driven like sheep, helpless, into the Nazi gas chambers. Not many people would have thought then that less than two decades later the Mossad would be hunting down Nazi war criminals across the globe."

“History is never linear and we will have our turn. Israeli war criminals are no longer untouchable and we are going after them,” he added.

But Murad, like most Gazans, is anxious about the challenges ahead. He worries that once the rubble is removed, many horrors will appear. Thousands of people are still missing, believed to be buried under the 40+ million tonnes of rubble across the Gaza Strip.

Gazans are also firm in their belief that given Israel’s history of breaching agreements, Netanyahu may fulfil the first phase of the three-phased ceasefire deal but resume the war afterwards. His political survival is contingent upon perpetual war, what he once called ‘living by the sword’, certainly as sections of Israel’s society see the agreement as surrender to Hamas.

Even if Israel fulfils phases 1 and 2, and all the Israeli captives have been released and the war declared over, Israel still has the reconstruction card — to commence in phase 3 — to pressure Palestinians. With 70% of Gaza’s destroyed or damaged, reconstruction, with serious international funding, will guarantee Gaza’s survival in the long run. But this could also be a window for Israel to softly expel Palestinians after the military pressure had failed to do so.

Sawsan, a former nursery teacher, does not consider the question of strategic wins or defeats. She believes that despite the Palestinian resilience during the slaughter, Gaza’s society is fractured at its core. Families were dispersed and thousands of children were orphaned. Reconstruction, to her, will have to include the social fabric and the entirety of society, not only the physical stones.Ìę

The social reconstruction is reminiscent of what happened after the Nakba. Then, families were forced out of their homes by Israel and dispersed across Palestine and abroad. No surprise some Palestinians call the Gaza slaughter ‘a second Nakba.’

Many believe Israel hit an impasse in Gaza and Palestinians won at least by not losing strategically. Some are convinced that Israel’s criminality has opened the world’s eyes to Palestinian plight. Others, however, are overwhelmed with grief, and all they see around them are orphans and shattered lives. For them, this is defeat.

Yet, all of these people agree that a ceasefire comes as a respite from the daily killing. As my friend Younis told me, "I'll go home first, set up a tent on top of its rubble, and then I’ll reflect."

Dr Emad Moussa is a Palestinian-British researcher and writer specialising in the political psychology of intergroup and conflict dynamics, focusing on MENA with a special interest in Israel/Palestine. He has a background in human rights and journalism, and is currentlyÌęaÌęfrequent contributor to multiple academic and media outlets, in addition to being a consultant for a US-based think tank.

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