After fifteen months of attacks, losses, fear and hunger, it is a day of hope in Gaza. To stay and rebuild, to leave and leave everything behind, that is the choice.
There are flags, torn and dirty, but they wave with pride and finally with hope. The shots are “in the air, to celebrate, not to kill”. Some cherish the normal idea of a coffee and a cigarette, an impossible dream in the Gaza Strip, where for more than a year everything has been lacking, even drinking water. There are those who have packed the few belongings they have stored for months under an increasingly patched tent, to return as soon as possible.
“I want to go to Gaza City, to see what’s left of my home, of my family. Whoever is still alive will go back there,” someone says. He is not alone. A few minutes after the ceasefire, social media is filled with images of a crowd walking among the rubble, marching among broken pillars, destroyed buildings that hide who knows how many bodies, entire neighborhoods reduced to dust and ashes and transformed into a shroud. Everyone is trying to reach the house they could only have imagined, asking: “Is it still standing?”
After fifteen months of attacks, losses, fear and hunger, it is a day of hope in Gaza. To stay and rebuild, to leave and leave everything behind, that is the choice.
Hassan Ashour lost his home during the war and now lives in Deir el-Balah with his wife and two children. For him, there is nothing left in Gaza. “I need at least a year outside the Gaza Strip,” he says. For him and others, hope is in Rafah, the border crossing that until May last year was the last safe route for the wounded, the seriously ill or the few who could afford the expensive services of the Hala network. As of yesterday, the black gates with gold decorations, armored since last May when Israel took control of the area, have been open again. This does not mean that anyone can leave Gaza, since none of the neighboring countries, starting with Egypt, want an exodus. But the fact that this gate is now operational again could mean the end of the famine. Yesterday alone, 310 trucks carrying aid and 20 carrying fuel passed through there. “There are almost 4,000 ready,” UNRWA reports.
Ahmed crosses the Rafah border with an empty truck, his horn blaring and one arm outstretched, showing the victory symbol. He has just unloaded hundreds of sacks of flour, which – if inspections allow – will enter Rafah. And this already seems like a miracle, because it hasn’t happened in months.
In Rafah, the machinery of preparations came to a standstill, in the militarized Sinai, checks began to last for hours. And yet everything seemed ready. Since dawn on Sunday, IDF soldiers had begun to withdraw from the center of Rafah, up to two kilometers towards the Philadelphia corridor, along the border with Egypt. For the first time in 261 days, 50 ambulances had entered Gaza from Rafah. Then everything was blocked and the attacks resumed in the Strip, with their tragedy. At 11:15, the turning point came, when everyone was sure of another failure. And here are the gates opening, the trucks starting their engines. “I received this load of potatoes twenty days ago,” says Mohamed. I was afraid it would be like in May, when they made us wait so long that we had to throw them all away.”
In recent months, this has been a regular occurrence, while people were starving a few kilometers away. In Gaza today, everything is needed. Most of the population is malnourished, less than half of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are functional. Until the ceasefire – Save the Children calculates – 15 children a day have suffered serious or permanent injuries.
For them too, Rafah could be a hope. According to the agreement, the Egyptian gate should allow the wounded women and children to leave, to be taken first to the triage center set up near the border crossing and then distributed to hospitals in Sinai. But by late afternoon yesterday, no one had been transferred. Neither civilians nor “wounded military personnel”. According to sources, each of them should be accompanied by three family members and taken to hospitals in Doha as soon as possible. This is one of the most unclear points in the final text of the agreement, perhaps the most complicated for Israel. “A passport for Hamas” some express with bitterness, the next mine that could destroy the fragile ceasefire.
