Deir el-Balah, Gaza — Late on October 8, 2025, while everyone else in the house was asleep, I lay awake scrolling through my phone and journalist chat groups for updates. There were conflicting accounts from the ceasefire talks — of progress, setbacks, hope and doubt.
As my phone battery dwindled, I finally drifted off to sleep, stirred occasionally by distant shelling that told me what my phone couldn’t.
When I awoke just before dawn on October 9, my wi-fi was dead. I rushed to the roof, searching for an eSIM signal. The sun was rising as updates loaded onto my phone, and there it was: “Announcement of a ceasefire agreement in Gaza — to take effect within hours.”
I looked at the houses and tents where everyone still slept, saddened that we were the last to know. Then joy hit me. “Wake up, the war is over,” I shouted.
“Swear it?” my husband said. It was around 6:45am, and he was only half awake. I showed him the headlines, and gradually, the rest of the house, including my father, sisters, and my brother and his family, awoke to the news. They had all been staying with me since being displaced from the north. Everyone was in disbelief, but my daughter Banias, nine, beamed.
“Really? Are you serious?” she asked, before she jumped with happiness, tears rolling down her cheeks.
A little girl crying from joy.
Islam’s wedding blessing
Banias’s happiness suddenly reminded me that it was also my friend Islam’s wedding day. Just two days earlier, Islam had visited me at home with her sister-in-law to discuss the wedding. She had been engaged during the first truce in February 2025, but the wedding had been postponed five times.
Just a week earlier, she had lost all of her belongings when her family fled south from the Shati refugee camp in western Gaza City amid air raids. Her fiance’s family was also displaced. It was at that point that the couple decided to get married on October 9, with the families agreeing to hold a small, quiet ceremony to move forward with their lives.
But when I saw Islam on October 7, she was worried. She couldn’t find a dress. “The dresses are worn out … covered in dust and fading white,” she said.
Her sister-in-law, Manar, promised they’d find one, but Islam sighed, saying, “I don’t feel like a bride. I feel like I’m caught in a whirlpool.” When her fiance called that day to say he still hadn’t found a place to pitch their tent, she looked defeated.
Still, she wanted her small celebration. “That’s all I want,” Islam told me. “My wedding feels like a day of mourning, not happiness.”
But she had been wrong.
“The ceasefire came on your wedding day, my friend. What a rare blessing,” I thought.
‘The last hours of the war’
I quickly got dressed for my walk to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah, where journalists gather to cover the latest developments.
The streets were buzzing with news about the ceasefire. Some people had doubts, others smiled with cautious hope. I kept thinking, “Could these really be the last hours of the war?”
At the hospital, journalists and cameras lined the courtyard.
My colleague Nour smiled. “Finally,” she sighed. Nour hadn’t seen her children — Alia, 14, and Jamal, 11 — for a year and a half, having sent them to safety in Egypt while she stayed to cover the war. A ceasefire carried the hope that she might soon be reunited with them.
Displaced people and residents started to gather around us, asking if the news was true.
A 30-something woman I’d seen during my visits to Al Jazeera’s tent at Al-Aqsa Hospital during the first half of the war greeted me. She was there to visit a sister who had been injured in a bombing.
“They say there’s a ceasefire and the war is over? Is this true?” she asked.
Other displaced women overheard and wanted their own assurances. “So it’s certain?” they asked.
The sounds of jets overhead made everyone anxious, but by midday, Israel’s cabinet had ratified the agreement, and it started to feel real.
A displaced woman from Beit Hanoon told me, “We’re relieved the bombing stopped, but we don’t feel joy. What joy is there when we’ve lost everything? Our homes are gone. Our city is destroyed.”
After two years of relentless bombardment, people were exhausted.
In the afternoon, I headed towards al-Nuwairi Hill near the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. Thousands had gathered there on the sandy hill with their belongings, waiting to be allowed to travel north to their neighbourhoods in Gaza City.
One woman with three children sat on her bundles and said she’d wait all night for permission to return. She didn’t know if her house still stood, but for her and many others, the ceasefire meant one thing: a chance to return.
Every house now had one of two fates: standing or destroyed. “Standing” brought tears of joy, even if bombed or hollowed out. “Destroyed” meant heartbreak.
Celebrations in an empty shop
After a day of interviews, I still had time to attend Islam’s wedding, which was held in an empty shop in the Nuseirat camp. One of Islam’s relatives had rented the shop to shelter his newly displaced family just days earlier.
When I entered, a small group of women sat on plastic chairs arranged neatly along the unfinished walls. In the centre stood a simple “kousha”, an old brown couch where Islam sat with her new husband, Mohammad.
The cheerful beat of wedding music filled the room.
It was a small, humble celebration, and Islam glowed with joy. The shop buzzed with ululations and laughter.
I hugged Islam and said, “See, the war ended on your wedding day, the day you called unlucky. It’s a blessed day now, my friend.”
I greeted her groom, joking, “I just came from al-Nuwairi Hill. People are already there. Are you planning to go back north?”
He laughed, “If that’s true, I’ll take my bride and head north right now!”
I took a shared taxi on the way back home and listened as my fellow passengers debated the ceasefire. Many feared it wouldn’t hold, and everyone saw the first phase — the exchange of captives and prisoners — as a test.
Chocolate and cooking gas
For most Palestinians in Gaza, the past week has been a mix of relief, fear, and anticipation.
On that first calm Thursday, people began returning north, often to ruins. At my house, we debated whether to stay or return. On Saturday, calls confirmed that our family home, my husband’s, and my brother’s were all destroyed. We weren’t surprised — it was the same story for thousands.
I had already lived through that loss. Our home was destroyed a year and a half ago, and I’d already started anew in rented accommodation, which saved us from the uncertainty and heartbreak that so many others now felt.
By Sunday, discussions about returning continued. My father was eager to go back, but we decided to wait, especially as the prisoner exchanges began.
Life in Gaza remains nearly impossible — no water, services, communication, or power. A neighbour who went north warned us to stay put, telling us he had to walk a long way just to fetch water.
Then came devastating news: the assassination of Saleh Aljafarawi, a journalist and activist who had covered the war. He was murdered by local Israeli-backed militia amid clashes with Hamas.
Saleh’s death terrified us. Many fear it signalled Gaza’s next looming tragedy — that internal violence could finish what the Israeli army began.
On Monday, attention turned to the prisoner exchanges. Families rejoiced and wept. One mother danced when both her sons, thought dead, were released. Another man broke down after learning his wife and children had been killed. And in a bitter irony, Saleh’s brother Naji was released from prison the same day Saleh was buried.
By Tuesday, food prices began to drop. My daughter ran home, excited: “Mama, the chocolate that used to cost 18 shekels [$5.4] now costs six!” Then, true joy arrived — cooking gas. My husband read a message from the gas station, telling me, “Get the stove ready, you’ll cook on gas today for the first time in nine months!”
‘A small piece of dignity’
We pulled out the old stove, thick with grease and dust, and scrubbed it clean. When the first blue flame lit, we clapped and laughed, recording the moment on our phones like fireworks. Our first coffee brewed on a clean flame — rather than on firewood with black soot — felt miraculous. My father smiled over his cup.
“We’re reclaiming a small piece of dignity,” I thought.
By Wednesday, calm returned. I cooked pasta in 20 minutes instead of two hours. It tasted like “normal life”. But on Thursday, my father again raised the issue of returning. He spoke of building a small shelter among our ruins. I told him we should wait a bit longer. There were already accounts of Palestinians being killed by Israeli forces as they tried to return to their homes.
He nodded slowly, agreeing. “I can live with ruins,” he said, “but not without safety.”
As I listened to him, I thought about stories yet to tell — the people returning to rubble, trying to build new lives. I had to wait for the solar panels to charge before writing, since that’s our only source of power. “Unplug everything!” my husband often shouts. My new wish, alongside the return of gas, is for real electricity — an end to this daily war of energy and exhaustion.
When I finally began to write again, a quiet thought struck me. People may read these words, but do they know the conditions in which they’re written? Do they know the deep, unending struggle behind every word?
The post In Gaza, Palestinians reclaim small moments of dignity amid the ceasefire appeared first on Al Jazeera.
