Israelis react at Hostage Square in Tel Aviv on Thursday after news of a Gaza ceasefire deal.MAYA LEVIN/AFP/Getty Images
“Bring them home now.” This has been the mantra, the prayer, the plea, for people desperate for the return of the hostages abducted from Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 – people who have despaired over their imprisonment, the cruelty of it all, unending.
It is ending, finally.
The war in Gaza that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians. That has maimed children. Altered lives. That has wrought so much destruction – not just the buildings. It is ending.
The suffering of the families of the hostages, waiting, pleading, begging, sobbing – gaunt with anguish – soon this will be rewarded with reunions. The suffering will enter a new phase.
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The day before the agreement was reached, people around the world marked the grim second anniversary of the brutal and bloody surprise attacks that ignited the war on Oct. 7, 2023. In Tel Aviv, some 25,000 people gathered for a solemn ceremony.
“I remember the exact spot where I stood when they told me you’d been taken hostage, the moment the ground was pulled from under my feet,” said Viki Cohen, about her son Nimrod, who was 19 when he was abducted. “It’s been two years now. All the light has gone, and you’re there, trembling in the dark tunnels.”
The light is coming for him, for his mother and the rest of his family.
For Israelis. For Palestinians. For Gaza.
“This is the day we have been waiting for,” said Gazan Abd Rabbo, forced to move again and again during the war. “We want to go home.”
For broken-hearted girlfriends like Ilana Gritzewsky, who was home on Kibbutz Nir Oz with her partner Matan Zangauker when they were abducted and separated on Oct. 7 by Hamas terrorists.
“They beat me and forced me onto a motorcycle, wedged between two gunmen,” Ms. Gritzewsky, who was released after 55 days, wrote last May, still waiting for Mr. Zangauker. “They ... pressed my leg against the exhaust pipe, burning it. One of them groped me under my shirt. I passed out before we crossed into Gaza.”
This is only the first phase of the peace plan. There are, of course, many questions beyond the ceasefire, IDF withdrawal, return of the hostages, and release of Palestinian prisoners. So many “now whats?”
What does the future of Gaza look like? Who will oversee – and carry out – the reconstruction: rebuilding hospitals, schools, homes? Who pays for it?
How to mend broken families and lives? What will Gaza’s governance look like, security look like, everyday life look like? What happens to Hamas? What happens in the West Bank? Will Palestinians finally get their own state in their homeland, like the one offered in the 1947 UN partition plan?
Could there be actual, lasting peace? Wounds from these last two years – and before – will be so difficult to stitch up.
Einav Zangauker, mother of hostage Matan Zangauker, in Tel Aviv on Thursday after the peace plan announcement.Ohad Zwigenberg/The Associated Press
There are other, less urgent questions too.
Will Israeli athletes be allowed to play tennis again in Canada with actual audiences present? Will fledgling Israeli singers be allowed to participate in Eurovision without other countries threatening to withdraw? Will Björk and Massive Attack be okay with their songs being streamed by Israeli tweens on Spotify?
Will Palestinian artists be allowed to speak their minds? Will protest art – and art commemorating the Gaza catastrophe – stop making museum executives and boards nervous? Will Israeli artists be welcomed once again at international festivals?
Or will the shunning continue?
What about Israeli travellers? Can they book hotel rooms in Italy or Japan without fear of rejection? Get a slice of pizza in Austria without getting kicked out of a restaurant? One recent headline from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: “I Escaped to a Greek Nudist Paradise, Only to Discover That Israelis are Hated There, Too.”
Will the protests stop? Can Jewish students in Canada feel completely welcome again on university campuses? Can Jewish-owned businesses – and Jewish schools, synagogues – feel safe?
Will Israeli filmmakers – many of whom have taken the Netanyahu government to task in their work – be allowed back into the international filmmaking fold? Will Israeli academics be welcome to participate in conferences, publish papers? Will their knowledge, findings and scientific breakthroughs be deemed important enough to overcome the anger over this war?
Perhaps these questions, some more crucial than others, can be left for another day. Because now, the military assault on Gaza is ending. Humanitarian aid can flow.
And now, they – the hostages who are still alive, many young men who had been dancing at dawn at a music festival, or just living their Saturday morning lives at home on a kibbutz – are coming home.
“If I have one dream,” said Mr. Zangauker’s mother, Einav, after the deal was announced, “it is seeing Matan sleep in his own bed.”