Across Israel and the occupied territories, Israelis and Palestinians are expressing conflicted feelings of joy, despair, relief, and anxiety.
The world has witnessed happy scenes of families reuniting, as the 20 remaining living hostages that Hamas took on October 7, 2023, were returned to Israel, and more than 1,900 Palestinian prisoners were released.
The ceasefire is holding for now, even as both sides accuse the other of violating the terms. The daily aerial bombardments have stopped, and Gazans are returning to what’s left of their homes. The violence has not entirely ended, though.
President Donald Trump spoke to a rapturous audience at Israel’s Knesset, where he was feted for his role in brokering the ceasefire deal. He then attended a peace summit with more than 20 world leaders in Egypt.
But amid the celebrations and the grieving, there are many remaining questions about whether Hamas will disarm and relinquish power, and who will lead Gaza in its place.
Today, Explained host Noel King spoke to Nidal Al-Mughrabi, a Cairo-based senior correspondent for Reuters. Al-Mughrabi has worked for Reuters since 1996 and lost his Gaza home in an Israeli bombardment, but says he and other Palestinians are hopeful that the peace will endure this time.
Nidal, understandably, there’s a lot of optimism about this peace deal. You’ve been reporting even today on what Hamas is doing in Gaza. What’s going on?
Since the ceasefire came into effect, Hamas forces have been deployed into the streets of the Gaza Strip, in areas where the army pulled back from, in an attempt to reassert power and to fight back against some of the armed gangs and what Hamas calls people who have collaborated with Israel to instigate chaos and anarchy. They have deployed hundreds of security forces and fighters in some areas, and in the past three days, they have clashed with several clan members and armed groups, killing dozens, according to security officials from Hamas. They’re fighting in different places across the Gaza Strip.
Yes, the exchange of rockets or exchange of fire with Israel may have stopped. But Hamas has another kind of a battle, which is to regain control of Gaza, which it has ruled since 2007, and may be encouraged by what US President Donald Trump has given a nod to Hamas to do. When this is going to last until, and what kind of a window or a timeline have the Americans given Hamas to still exist before they move to the next phase of disarming the movement, is going to be a very complicated and thorny issue in the negotiations. I don’t think that Israel likes what they see on the ground. The ultimate goal for Israel, as expressed by [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and Defense Minister [Israel] Katz, is that the next day in Gaza, there would be no presence for Hamas in the government. Hamas must be disarmed and defeated.
Over the last two years, many members of Hamas, including the group’s leadership, have been killed by Israel. How strong is Hamas today?
Hamas nowadays is not the same movement that it was before October 7, 2023. They have lost almost all of the top military commanders. They have lost many of the political leaders of the group. They have lost hundreds or thousands of fighters. But in the past three days, they have shown a serious attempt towards reassertion of their control of Gaza Strip. We are seeing hundreds of security forces on the ground. We are seeing dozens of armed fighters, well-equipped, also touring the streets, raiding some places, looking for people on their wanted list for what they said was instigation of anarchy and chaos and collaboration with Israel during the war. Yesterday, there was a video that showed several armed masked men, some of them wearing green bandanas resembling the ones that Hamas fighters usually wear on their foreheads, killing seven people. And according to one of Hamas’ security officials — he confirmed to Reuters the authenticity of the video and told us that it was an execution of alleged collaborators.
What you’re reminding us is that Hamas really did have a lot of control over the Gaza Strip, and it exercised it, at points, through violence. A key element of this ceasefire is that Hamas is being asked to disarm and give up control over the territory. How likely is Hamas to actually do that?
Publicly, officially, Hamas leaders have been against that. They have repeatedly rejected the idea of disarming. Having said that, there will be negotiations over Israel’s and the United States’ demands. Actually it’s not only the demand now by Israel and the United States, since many Arab and Muslim countries, some of them are very friendly with Hamas, welcomed the Trump 20-point document. So the pressure on Hamas is expected to be very high.
But at the same time, Hamas is arguing that it has agreed to relinquish power. They will no longer be in the governance in Gaza, and [they say] that they are accepting a government of technocrats, but they’re referring to Palestinians in the government of technocrats and not to the international force or entity that the Trump blueprint is detailing.
So Palestinians want Palestinian leadership. They don’t want outsiders coming in to rule over them. How are civilians in Gaza feeling about the prospect of an end to this war? What are you hearing?
The Palestinians, especially in Gaza, are joyful. But we shouldn’t forget that this joy is not pure, because it’s mixed with feelings of despair. It’s mixed by the feeling of loss and the loss of families, the loss of houses, the loss of an entire city. Somebody would tell us, “Now that the war is over, it is time to look for the body of my father or the body of my son, which is still under the rubble of our house back in Gaza City.” Some people would tell you that “yes, the war is over, but when will the rebuilding of Gaza happen? Are we going to continue to live in tents for years to come before they rebuild Gaza?”
Because there is no timeline for when the reconstruction will happen or if it will ever happen, because it’s all dependent on whether the deal will succeed, on whether Hamas will agree to disarm. It is conditional. So the lack of clarity torments the people, and also impacts the feelings of relief they are trying to hold onto.
I wonder how you are feeling today after covering decades of wars and peace treaties. Where is your mind at?
That’s a tough question. I’ve been with Reuters since 1996. I have covered numerous rounds of fighting in 2008, 2012, 2014, 2019, 2021, 2022, and 2023. And here I am covering the biggest and longest-ever war or fighting between the Palestinians and Israel. Just like any Palestinian, I just hope that the guns have gone silent forever and that the people will have the opportunity to rebuild their lives. Because it’s not just homes that have been destroyed. It’s also the lives of the people that had been torn apart. People did not even have a chance to comfort one another or even to grieve for the people they have lost. Some of the people have not even had the chance to bury their own relatives.
So those deserve some time of peace, at least, even if they only want to grieve. I hear people telling me that the thing that they want to do the most when this war ends is to cry. Can you imagine? Because they had to contain these feelings of sadness, sorrow, and frustration for so long. So it is time for them to have a break, some relief, and hope that this war is actually over, and that there’s not going to be any resumption of the fighting. It’s what every Palestinian wants, and I’m included.
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