In the devastated heart of Gaza City—where the acrid stench of explosives still lingers and the cries of orphaned children haunt the wind—an unexpected glimmer of hope has pierced the darkness. After marathon negotiations in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh, Israel and Hamas have reached an agreement on the first phase of US President Donald Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace framework. The accord calls for an immediate ceasefire; the release of 48 remaining Israeli hostages, 20 of whom are believed to be alive, in exchange for 250 Palestinians serving life sentences and 1,700 others detained since October 2023; and a partial Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Humanitarian aid is set to resume, while mediators from Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey have pledged that this truce signals a “permanent end" to the war.

Scenes of relief and disbelief rippled across the region: in Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square, where families clutched photos of loved ones, and in Khan Younis’s battered camps, where survivors dared, cautiously, to hope. Hamas negotiator Khalil al-Hayya declared it “the end of aggression", while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office maintained that Israel would retain control over more than half of Gaza even after withdrawal. Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, hailed the deal as a “historic reset". Yet for Gaza’s 2.1 million residents, celebration is muted by grief. This ceasefire rests atop the ashes of a catastrophe that UN experts, genocide scholars, and human rights organisations, including Israel’s own B’Tselem, have described as an unfolding genocide: over 67,000 Palestinians killed, a third of them children, and 80% of homes and infrastructure reduced to dust.

The truce comes exactly two years after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, assault, which left 1,139 Israelis dead, 695 of them civilians, and 251 taken hostage. Israel’s ensuing response, justified as self-defence, became an unrelenting campaign of bombardment, invasion, and siege that turned Gaza into a wasteland of famine and disease. The devastation has transcended the logic of war; it represents a systematic unmaking of a people. Whether this fragile peace can endure depends on whether it is built on justice; for without accountability for mass killings and the deliberate targeting of children, today’s ceasefire risks becoming little more than a brief interlude before the next tragedy.

To understand the ceasefire’s gravity, one must face the abyss it halts. Gaza’s Health Ministry, whose figures are regarded as reliable by the UN and WHO, reports 67,194 deaths as of October 9, 2025, and thousands missing under debris or claimed by famine. An independent medRxiv study estimates the true toll at nearly 84,000, accounting for indirect deaths from starvation, untreated injuries, and collapsed healthcare.

Leaked Israeli military data indicate that 83% of those killed were civilians, five out of six deaths. Former IDF Chief Herzi Halevi conceded in September 2025 that more than 200,000 Palestinians were killed or injured. Gaza’s children have suffered disproportionately: over 18,500 minors have perished — more than in all global conflicts from 2019 to 2022 combined. With 735 attacks on healthcare facilities, leaving 22 of 36 hospitals non-functional, surgeons have been forced to operate without anaesthesia.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) in September 2025 placed half a million Gazans in “catastrophic" Phase 5 hunger, with 97% of tree crops and 82% of farmland destroyed. The UN Human Rights Office concluded that Israel had shown “intent to destroy" through mass killing, starvation, and forced displacement of 1.9 million people — 90% of Gaza’s population — in violation of the Genocide Convention.

Israel’s claim that 20,000 Hamas fighters were killed has been contradicted by its own records, which confirm just 8,900 militants. Economically, Gaza’s GDP has been annihilated; UN projections suggest it could take 350 years to recover without intervention.

This genocide did not emerge in a vacuum. It is the culmination of 57 years of occupation, 18 years of blockade, and repeated cycles of violence — 2008, 2014, 2021. October 7 was barbaric, but Israel’s response — disproportionate and indiscriminate — has been deemed “plausibly genocidal" by the International Court of Justice since January 2024. For true peace, reparations and accountability must replace vengeance and denial.

Trump’s framework, unveiled around September end, envisions a phased endgame: an immediate ceasefire within 24 hours, followed by a 72-hour window for hostage exchanges and expanded humanitarian access; a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza paired with Hamas’s disarmament; and finally, Gaza’s reconstruction under a technocratic Palestinian authority backed by Arab states and supervised by the United Nations.

Resistance remains deep. Netanyahu’s coalition has vehemently opposed the release of Marwan Barghouti and insists on retaining key security zones. Optimists highlight Trump’s leverage and Arab financial commitments as stabilising forces, while sceptics like Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha warn that the plan merely repackages occupation in diplomatic attire. The ceasefire’s fate, like earlier truces in November 2023 and January 2025, will hinge on enforcement—something neither side has honoured before.

Yet this deal bears Trump’s unmistakable imprint: audacious, transactional, and self-promotional, but tactically shrewd. What unfolded was less a triumph of diplomacy........

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