Abir Huweiti had slipped into a rare sleep amid the sound of ferocious bombardment in Gaza City when her husband shook her awake on Friday night: Hamas had responded positively to US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire proposal.
In the dark of her parents’ shuddering home, they read the news until dawn: “We could not sleep for all the happiness,” said Huweiti, 35.
The mother of three had barely left the house in weeks as Israel intensified its assault on the city, but after Friday’s announcement she felt optimism spreading through its battered and emptied streets.
“Whether or not to flee south was a headache that consumed one’s mind 24 hours” a day, she said. “Now people have stopped thinking like that, because there are negotiations, and hopefully a solution.”
The momentum building behind Trump’s 20-point plan for a ceasefire and the postwar rule of Gaza, unveiled last week, has been a salve for some — like Huweiti — who have stayed in the enclave’s besieged north, where Israel’s defence minister last week said anyone remaining would be deemed “terrorists and supporters of terror”.
But many across Gaza, while unable to resist hope, doubt that the latest round of talks will result in a full end to Israel’s war against Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that has controlled Gaza since 2007.
Trump’s plan contains highly contentious elements, such as a key role in Gaza’s governance for former UK prime minister Tony Blair.
For Gazans, any plan that stops Israel’s offensive is better than the daily killings and starvation they now endure. But after two years of failed negotiations, they have learned to be wary. Some fear that if Hamas releases the hostages, Israel may then resume attacks.
Mohanad al-Sheikh Ali, 26, said the negotiations were a “political game”. He observed that there were clear disagreements between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas over key elements of the plan.
The militants’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel — in which they killed 1,200 people in Israel and seized 250 hostages — triggered the war, which in turn gave rise to a wave of instability around the Middle East.
Al-Sheikh Ali lives in a tent with his parents and siblings in coastal Mawasi, surviving with the use of a shared oven. He said prices for basic goods had begun dropping since Hamas’s announcement, a sign that some Gazans believe a deal may succeed in at least partly lifting Israel’s siege.
Israel’s offensive has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, and reduced much of the strip to rubble. Al-Sheikh Ali has given up picturing a future in Gaza; he said he hoped any agreement would lead to border crossings opening so he could leave and make a new life far away.
“So much inside of us has been killed,” he said. “Beyond hope, beyond patience.”
Displaced Palestinian girls stand at the entrance of a tent in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza on Sunday © Bashar Taleb/AFP/Getty Images
Negotiators will hold crunch talks with Israel and Hamas on the US-led proposal in Egypt on Monday. Netanyahu has said Israel accepts the plan, but with caveats.
Hamas has also agreed to some of the proposals and said it was willing to return the 48 hostages, 20 of whom are believed to be still alive.
But details about some of the key issues — such as whether the Israeli military will withdraw entirely from Gaza and whether Hamas will disarm — remain vague.
Israel and the US agreed on Saturday that Israeli troops would move back from their previous lines in Gaza, but Palestinians and aid workers said bombings continued. Some 66 people were killed on Friday and Saturday, according to the health ministry in the strip.
Israeli tanks move in the Gaza Strip towards the border with Israel on Sunday, as seen from a position on the Israeli side © Amir Levy/Getty Images
Many in Gaza feel they have lived through such moments of near-deliverance too many times.
In the overwhelmed refugee camps of southern Gaza’s coast, to which many of the 2.1mn population have been displaced, residents said the news brought some spontaneous celebrations — but few of the public outpourings of relief seen during previous rounds of negotiations.
Esraa Sami, 23, fled Gaza City last month as Israel expanded its offensive. Her father had been killed in an Israeli bombing days before, as they were preparing to escape.
In her tent at the edge of Mawasi, she has nurtured her ambitions of applying for a master’s degree abroad. But she balances hope with wariness.
“We had a few moments of optimism when Hamas announced its acceptance of the deal, but I am cautious,” said the psychology graduate.
“We cheered a lot in the past on similar occasions but it quickly turned to disappointment, so we will wait until there is implementation . . . People praised God when the announcement came, but then they decided to wait and see.”
Palestinians carry bags and boxes as they leave a food distribution point run by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in central Gaza on Sunday © Eyad Baba/AFP/Getty Images
Trump’s plan rules out the forced displacement of Gazans, saying Palestinians would have a choice between remaining or leaving after the ceasefire goes into effect.
For many like Sami and Ali, a deal that opened border crossings could mean escaping what they see as a place which has nothing left for them after Israel destroyed the cities and towns where they would have worked and studied.
Sami does not want to endure what she knows would be years of postwar desolation and rebuilding. “I would go, and come back when Gaza returns to being Gaza,” she said.
Dina Ayash, a 40-year-old former school principal, has decided she would leave with her parents and sisters, but knows it would be difficult: “The problem is where to go, which country would receive us?”
But a stop to the killing would at least bring a more immediate relief.
Abir Huweiti, the mother in Gaza City, laughed when she thought about what she would do first in a ceasefire. “My kids have been trapped inside,” she said. “I’d take them and go to the sea.”
