A Cease-Fire Is a Moment to Count the Dead

"We are a few days into something called a cease-fire. Can we even say that- "a few days into a cease-fire"? For Palestinians in Gaza, the words feel strange on the tongue. Perhaps they are supposed to connote peace, relief, and the chance to take a breath after months of suffocation. Yet I feel none of those things. I don't even feel that the war has stopped."

"By now we should be experts on cease-fires. We've lived through many cycles of war and cessation. And yet I don't know what to feel. "New chapter," I say to myself. I imagine a director with a clapboard calling, "Scene three!"-but at this point I've lost count of the takes. I'm not alone in this unease. Among my friends and relatives, no one seems to trust this peace. We fear that it will shatter, as the agreements before it have."

"Two years of war is a long time. Wounds don't heal, but fester. Hardly anyone remembers what normal feels like. Technically, the fighting has paused, but we still hear the same sounds, feel the same fear, the same absence of everything familiar. Maybe, my sister-in-law suggested to me, this is why we don't feel relief or a sense of safety: because we know that whatever comes next will not be a return to the life we had."

"Life doesn't restart-it stumbles forward, uncertain and bruised. At moments like this, I think of an old Arabic saying: "The drunk has sobered, and the thought has come." During the war, we had no time to think. The only focus was survival, hour by hour, moving from one place to another under bombardment, looking for food, water, medicine, cash, a place to exist. In such circumstances, thoughts, dreams, plans-even grief-collapse into a single instinct."

Palestinians in Gaza experience a cease-fire as a hollow pause rather than relief. Repeated cycles of war and failed agreements have produced deep mistrust and ongoing fear. Two years of conflict have left wounds that fester and erased clear memories of normal life. Daily survival consumed thought and planning, and moments of quiet now return painful reflections and grief. Families mourn loved ones lost to strikes, and people expect that life will not revert to what it was. Movement, resources, and basic security remain uncertain, leaving communities bruised, cautious, and unable to embrace promises of lasting peace.

Read at The Atlantic