Displaced Palestinians travel back to the northern part of Gaza after the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect.Mahmoud Issa/Reuters
Izzeldin Abuelaish is a Palestinian-Canadian doctor born and raised in Jabalia Camp in the Gaza Strip, and a distinguished visiting professor and founder of the Global Institute for the Study of Socio-endemic Diseases, Hatred, Health and Peace at KU Leuven University in Belgium.
The bombs have stopped. The sky, once filled with drones and fire, is momentarily quiet. A fragile silence hovers. But it is not peace – it feels like the exhausted pause between waves of destruction.
The world calls it a “ceasefire.” It’s the brief moment when people can finally breathe – not in relief, but in mourning. The war has stopped temporarily. The pain has not.
This is the moment when Gazans, after enduring unimaginable loss, are left with the unbearable task of counting the dead. They grieve for their children, their parents, their friends – and for the pieces of themselves buried under the rubble.
This is when many will try to brand this tragedy as a “conflict” between equals, or another “cycle” of violence. But for those who have lived it, there is no symmetry in the suffering, no balance in the injustice. The truth must not be blurred.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians returned to a devastated Gaza City.BASHAR TALEB/AFP/Getty Images
The poet Mahmoud Darwish once wrote: “After the war, the leaders shake hands.” We saw this truth unfold again. Politicians meet, smile and declare “understandings,” while the people who have lost everything are left to face the silence of absence.
So let the leaders shake hands. But let the world also listen to those who carry both the memory of the dead and the hope of the living. Their pain is not a story to be pitied; it is a mirror held up to the world’s conscience. And when we look, may we finally ask not who won the war, but who lost their humanity.
The cost is beyond what the world can see. It is not only the destroyed homes or the lives cut short; it is the invisible damage that seeps into every breath, every heartbeat, every dream. The loss of hope, the disfigurement of memory, the fear that peace is impossible – these are the wounds no ceasefire can heal.
Yesterday, I spoke with my brother, whose family has been displaced. I asked him when they were going to return to Gaza. He paused, then said quietly: “Where to go? Our home is demolished, and the whole area is a ghost. Let us remain here, where we have a tent, until we see.”
Those heart-piercing words capture the reality of millions of Palestinians – people suspended between past and future, between rubble and exile. My brother’s question echoes through every corner of Gaza, where families stand amid ruins, unsure whether the silence means survival or the calm before another storm.
Born in Gaza within weeks of Oct. 7, these twins have known nothing but war
That question – where to go – is the deepest wound of all. When people are denied not only safety but also the meaning of home, they are stripped of their very sense of belonging. Displacement becomes not just a physical state, but a psychological exile.
These uncertain times are painful and fearful, too. Will the ceasefire continue long enough to end not only the war, but also its root causes? Those who speak of “the end of war” without addressing its causes are merely preparing for the next one. We need to understand that military means will never bring safety, security or peace – that every bomb dropped on civilians deepens the insecurity it claims to end, and that every child killed plants the seed of future rage.
So we grieve. But grieving is not a weakness; it is a moral right. It affirms that every life matters, that the dead are not numbers but names, faces, stories. But then we must transform grief into justice and accountability.
Gazans are not asking for pity. They are asking for life – a life with safety, dignity and meaning. That begins with reconstruction, both physical and emotional. The visible ruins are easier to count than the invisible ones: the broken hearts, the orphaned memories, the generations growing up surrounded by loss and yet still daring to hope. The inner architecture of peace – education, culture, public health and the restoration of human connection, dignity and the sense that life has value – will require patience and deeper investment to restore. And here is a silver lining: a rare opportunity for all to finally understand that the path to peace does not begin with military might, and that true reconstruction begins inside people.
In this moment, our world must also restore trust – in humanity, in the rule of law and in the international organizations created to protect it. Only in a world where every life is equal and valued, and all are accountable for their actions, can peace have meaning and permanence.