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3 February 2025

Letter from Gaza: the fighting is over, but the mourning is just beginning

This war has reached into every home, leaving no family untouched by its flames, no heart unscarred by its agonies.

By Sondos Sabra

Sunday 19 January

Today, my weary, sceptical heart is embracing hope again. After long weeks of anticipation, an entire nation holds its breath. We long for the silence of the guns and the drones. The people of Gaza, along with all the free souls of the world, await the ceasefire agreement brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the US, coming into effect today.

It ends a 14-month inferno that has claimed more than 45,000 lives, displaced more than two million people, and robbed 18,000 children of life before they could even begin to live it. 1,600 families have been entirely wiped out. The population of Gaza had dropped by 6 per cent by the end of 2024, while tens of thousands of injured are without access to hospitals. Thousands more remain prisoners or missing, their fate unknown.

This war has reached into every home in Gaza, leaving no family untouched by its flames, no heart unscarred by its agonies. It has reduced our city to rubble, leaving nothing fit for people to live in. We lived through days that felt like an endless nightmare, and survival seemed impossible. Every conceivable form of death was visited upon us, and at times, I found myself wishing for it to visit me, as a merciful escape.

Today marks the beginning of a transition from terror to prolonged mourning. It is time to tend to our wounds and to weep for those we never had the chance to grieve. I cry for each of my sister’s six children, one by one. I mourn the irreplaceable loss of our finest minds: thinkers, doctors, writers. If there is any victory, it has come at the steepest of prices.

The northern Gaza Valley now faces two heart-wrenching tasks: the recovery of the bodies of loved ones, buried beneath the rubble, and the agonising search for the missing. Yet, amid all this sorrow, the enduring spirit of our people will shine. People will return to their lands, crossing the northern Netzarim checkpoint to embrace their loved ones and the soil they call home. So too will the first prisoners released. Many will work tirelessly to prepare the homes and shelters that remain to welcome back the displaced. Neighbours will open their doors to one another, offering whatever space they have left.

Today is a new beginning, an opportunity to try to recover the life we have long forgotten. We embrace one another in our pain and move forward with confidence. We will bring our children, who have been deprived of education for far too long, back to school, and give them hope for a bright future. We will rebuild our mosques and churches, places that have always been beacons of tolerance. This is a time for healing, for self-reflection and for learning from our past mistakes.

The Palestinian people know how to persevere and live with dignity, but today we need the world’s support to move forward, towards a better tomorrow, one where hope triumphs and peace becomes our reality.

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Thursday 23 January

Today is the fifth day since the ceasefire was declared in Gaza. I have woken up to an eerie silence, without the roar of planes or the cackle of gunfire – silence so loud it feels as though it is testing us: can we really learn to live again in peace?

Outside, life has slowly started to return to the streets. Gaza is preparing to welcome home those who had to flee south to escape death. My heart is overwhelmed with a longing that words cannot capture. After a year and a half of separation, I will soon embrace my father and sisters. I think about that reunion, when the laughter of relief and joy will mix with the tears of loss.

Early in the morning, I go to update my family’s data at the UNRWA office. The queue is long, the faces of those around me are pale, weighed down by worries, but in their eyes there is a glimmer of hope. A woman standing beside me seems to be desperate for conversation, to make the time pass faster. She begins to speak: “My family fled Gaza… my father, my brothers and their children. Fifteen people left together. But now, when they return, there will only be nine. The rest will never return… they will never come back.”

She pauses briefly, trying to gather her words: “I still can’t accept that they’re gone forever. Sometimes, I go into their rooms. I see their things in their places; they look as if they’ll return at any moment. But… my heart breaks every time. How did they leave like this? How did they go without saying goodbye?” I feel her pain intertwine with mine, as if our sorrow is not individual but collective, a grief shared by every home in Gaza.

A young man, carrying a small box and moving between the people in line, catches my attention. As he approaches me, I realise he is handing out cups of hot coffee to everyone, free of charge. He smiles and says simply: “This is my gift to you. We can wait a long time, but at least let’s wait while feeling warmth.”

I watch as the woman beside me takes her cup. “Despite all this pain, we still find among us those who bring gestures like this,” she says to me. “Gaza is not just what the war has destroyed, Gaza is the people who remind us every day that goodness still exists.”

When I return home, I find guests have gathered to meet my brother-in-law, who has been living with us since the Israeli occupation destroyed his home before this war began, in August 2023. These men have come to help my sister’s neighbours retrieve their daughter’s body, which has been buried in my sister’s yard in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood for many months.

In the early days of the invasion, my sister’s neighbours, fleeing the advancing tanks, sought refuge in her home. Amid the heavy bombardment and the news of bodies falling in the streets, her neighbour’s daughter’s heart suddenly gave in; her pregnant body could withstand the terror no longer. There was no time or place to bury her properly.

Now, after months, her family is trying to recover her body to bury her with dignity. I looked at the simple tools they had brought with them and wondered: can these tools withstand all the destruction? Or will her body remain as so many others, forever lost.

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