Obeid has not seen his house damaged in northern Gaza for more than a year. How serious is the damage? he wondered. Who will rebuild a decimated Gaza? And will Hamas continue to run it?
Weissglas is concerned about the conditions of the hostages who will be gradually released in the coming weeks from the territory’s humid neighborhoods. And he grimaced at the thought of trading them for hundreds of Palestinian detainees, many of whom are serving life sentences for attacks on Israelis. “There is relief,” he said, “wrapped in caution, fears and concern.”
It was an apt summary of the mood on both sides of the divide on Sunday, as Israelis and Palestinians expressed feelings of euphoria tinged with doubt.
For the Palestinians, the truce aims to guarantee at least six weeks without attacks in Gaza. This offers a window for Palestinians to take first tentative steps toward reconstruction; finding relatives still buried in the rubble; and accept the slaughter of more than 45,000 people, both civilians and combatants, whose bodies have already been counted by the Gaza health authorities. On Sunday, scenes of joy were broadcast from all over the territory, while rescuers threw confetti; the crowd danced and sang among the rubble; and the journalists symbolically took off their bulletproof vests.
For the Israelis, the deal allows for the gradual release of at least 33 of the hostages captured during the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, an attack that killed up to 1,200 people and sparked Israel’s devastating response that lasted 15 months. For the hostages released alive, that means freedom after 470 days of captivity. For Israelis in general, many of them tormented by a form of survivor’s guilt, it offers a qualified catharsis. In the embodiment of that mood, friends of one of the first three hostages freed on Sunday were filmed jumping for joy after hearing the news of their freedom.
But the details of the agreement between Israel and Hamas mean that both sides still face considerable uncertainty about how the next six weeks will play out, let alone whether the tentative agreement will later become permanent. Even the first phase began hours late on Sunday morning, amid disputes over which hostages would be freed in the afternoon. In that time, according to Gaza authorities, Israeli strikes killed and injured even more people.
For now, Israel also still controls vast stretches of Gaza and has not yet agreed to a full withdrawal, which would prevent hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, like Obeid, from returning to their homes in northern Gaza. It remains to be seen whether Israeli troops will ever fully withdraw.
“What happens after 42 days?” Weissglas said. “No one knows.”
The Palestinians are also unclear about the fate of several thousand people detained incommunicado during the war and who may not be released during upcoming exchanges. Reema Diab, a housewife in central Gaza, still has no way to locate her husband, a horse trainer, who she says was taken for questioning in Israel in December 2023 and has not been heard from since. of him since then.
“I am relieved that the bloodshed is coming to an end, but my heart hurts,” Diab said. “His absence is unimaginable.”
Across the border, Israeli columnists adopted a somber tone, with one of them, Ben Caspit, describing a mix of joy and sadness, “inseparably intertwined.” He wrote that Sunday was a day of reckoning, not celebration, and emphasized that Israel would now have to accept the magnitude of its failure on October 7, 2023.
“Let us be silent for a moment, let us study our conscience, let us suffer the disaster, let us think of those who were murdered, burned, raped and kidnapped,” Caspit wrote in Maariv, a right-wing daily. .
The Israelis also feared for the fate of some 65 hostages who may not be released from Gaza if the deal fails after six weeks. Similarly, there were widespread fears that the initial 33 hostages to be released over the next 42 days could be emotionally or physically scarred, or even dead. And Israelis generally lamented that the hostages’ freedom would come in exchange for Palestinian detainees, including some convicted of major terrorist attacks, as well as teenagers who have never been charged.
Palestinians view the soon-to-be-released detainees as freedom fighters and political prisoners. For Israelis, it will be a psychological blow to see “this stream of murderers being released,” Weissglas said.
Videos of Hamas fighters triumphantly emerging from hiding were also a blow to the Israelis, who had hoped the war would completely destroy the group’s military capabilities. For many people in Gaza, it was a sight worth celebrating, but for others, it was a reminder of the lingering uncertainty about Gaza’s future government.
Obeid works for the Palestinian Authority, which lost power to Hamas in Gaza 18 years ago, but still employs some Gaza civil servants, including Obeid, and now hopes to play a larger role in postwar Gaza. Obeid said he had been in contact in recent days with authority leaders in the West Bank to plan possible cleanup and reconstruction operations in Gaza. It is unclear, he said, whether those efforts will be possible with Hamas still in charge for the next six weeks, and perhaps even beyond.
It is also unclear when Israel will allow Obeid, who fled to Egypt last year after being displaced three times in Gaza, to return home.
But all of that can be addressed in time, Obeid said.
For now, he said, “I can breathe oxygen again.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Patrick Kingsley
Photos by: Amit Elkayam and Avishag Shaar-Yashuv
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
