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With a truce between Israel and Hezbollah taking hold, Gazans are losing hope that Israel’s war in the enclave will end anytime soon.
As a tenuous cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah began to take hold early Wednesday, some Palestinians in Gaza said they felt forgotten, nearly 14 months into a war that has shattered the enclave and killed tens of thousands of Gazans.
Announcing the deal on Tuesday, President Biden said he hoped it could pave the way to an end to the war in Gaza. But for months, cease-fire talks between Israel and the Palestinian armed group Hamas, which sparked the war with its deadly October 2023 attack on Israel, have stalled as Israeli airstrikes and shelling have continued to pound Gaza.
Palestinians there say they have lost hope that the war will ever end.
Majed Abu Amra, a 26-year-old displaced from his home and living in Deir al Balah in central Gaza, said he was frustrated that the international community had managed to secure a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, while Gazans were still trying to survive relentless Israeli bombardment.
“There is no global pressure to achieve an agreement here,” he said. “It is not only the occupation that is killing us — the world is complicit in what we are suffering,” Mr. Abu Amra added, referring to the presence of Israeli forces in Gaza.
“The blood of Gazans has become cheap,” he said.
A lasting cease-fire has proved harder to reach in Gaza because the hostages held by Hamas give it more leverage in negotiations, and because any deal with the group could create political peril for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.
That leaves Gazans heading into a second straight winter of war. United Nations agencies have repeatedly warned that Gazans face a worsening crisis, with falling temperatures adding to the plight of hundreds of thousands living in makeshift shelters. The war in has displaced the majority of the enclave’s 2.2 million people, many of them multiple times.
“Another winter in Gaza. How to describe misery on top of a human tragedy?” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, wrote on social media on Tuesday, renewing his pleas for a cease-fire in Gaza and for more humanitarian aid to be allowed into the territory.
Mohammed Ahmed, a 23-year-old businessman displaced from Gaza City to Deir al Balah with his family, said they felt “betrayed by the truce” reached between Israel and Hezbollah, which began attacking Israel in October 2023 in support of Hamas. He said he believed it would lead to an escalation of the bombardment in Gaza, as Israel’s military would intensify its focus there.
“We’re disappointed with this news because we will be alone in facing the occupation without anyone to support us or relieve the pressure from us,” he said.
Ahmed Al-Mashharawi, a 26-year-old father of two in northern Gaza, said he had similar fears.
“Last night it felt like an earthquake,” he said of the intensity of the Israeli airstrikes. “My children woke up from the bombardment and were terrified. I thought the cease-fire had happened and they had withdrawn the army from Lebanon and brought it to Gaza.”
Abdul Aziz Said, a 33-year-old social worker, said that he was glad a cease-fire had been reached in Lebanon, and that Hezbollah should never have started its hostilities in support of Hamas.
“I want to see war in Lebanon end, even though that might not be the best thing for the Gaza war, as Israel will be freed up to focus on Gaza,” he said. “But let’s hope lives can be saved in Lebanon at least.”
Rawya Ahmed Al-Nabih, a 42-year-old who has been displaced multiple times, also welcomed the news but said she saw no end in sight to the plight of Palestinians.
“We need the attention of all Arab countries and the whole world to turn to the tragedy of the Palestinian people, because our suffering has become enormous,” she said.
She said she hoped that “a cease-fire will be achieved in Gaza as well, because we have the right to live in peace like the rest of the peoples of the world.”
Abu Bakr Bashir contributed reporting.
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