Dima Owais, 56, and her 17 family members all share a tent in Mawasi Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip. Inside the cramped tent, they stay glued to their phones, keeping up with the latest news from Syria. Scenes of Syrians raising signs of peace and victory as the Assad regime crumbles, give the family a dash of hope.
“When I heard the news and saw photos of Syrian refugees preparing to get back home, I imagined us. It could be us getting back home after this long year like the Syrians,” Owais told Mondoweiss. “They suffered for long years, and finally they got their liberation. I believe it’s our turn now.”
The families, who are struggling to survive after being displaced in the beginning of the Israeli genocide on Gaza, are desperate to hear about any news of a ceasefire, and the opportunity to go back to their homes.
Owais is finding that hope in Syria, and the latest developments in the region. So much so, that as news broke that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime was falling, she began calling her siblings asking them for help if they get the chance to go back to Gaza City, where their home is located, within the coming week.
And while Owais’s optimism may be disregarded by some as wishful thinking, after more than a year of displacement for her and her family, Owais believes that the timing of the ceasefire in Lebanon and the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, could soon mean an end to the genocide in Gaza. Those hopes have only been bolstered by reports of progress being made in Gaza ceasefire talks happening now in Cairo.
“Enough of what we are exposed to every hour, enough of all this death and destruction! We want to return to our homes and neighborhoods. We can bring them [our homes] back to life, but we do not want to stay away from them,” Owais exclaimed.
“For nearly a year and a half, we have been displaced in the streets, moving from one place to another and losing our loved ones every moment. We do not want wars. All we want is to live in peace in our country without being exposed to killing and extermination,” she said.
Expecting worse
While people like Owais see hope in regional developments and the impact it may have on Gaza, others in Gaza are not so optimistic, fearing that recent events in Lebanon and Syria may actually make things worse for Gaza.
In a tent in Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza, Azmi Issa, 44, sits with his family, hoping to survive the next day. Recent regional events have made him more worried about his family’s future in their homeland. Issa fears that the ceasefire in Lebanon, and Israeli advances in Syria indicate that Israel is feeling stronger and more emboldened to continue its ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
Israeli actions in Lebanon and Syria, coupled with daily massacres ongoing in Gaza, leads him to believe the latest events will not be good for Gaza and its people.
“Israel carries out its plans in the region, expands in Syria and Lebanon, and destroys Gaza to expand inside, but they face resistance. They want to break any hand helping the resistance in Gaza, so they can break Gaza and its resistance,” Issa said, referring to Hezbollah in Lebanon and the recent ceasefire deal signed with Israel, which Israeli officials celebrated as a successful move to further isolate resistance groups in Gaza from their regional partners. Hezbollah has insisted that its ceasefire deal with Israel does not mean it has abandoned Gaza – promises that some in the Strip see as nothing more than platitudes.
Gaza-based political analyst Ahmad Abdulrahman shared a similar analysis, and said that Issa’s fear that things would get worse for Gaza were not off base. “Gaza impacts and gets impacted by the regional situation, especially in places that historically support the Palestinian rights to resist and liberate their lands,” Abdulrahman told Mondoweiss.
“The impact [of regional developments] on Gaza will be negative, especially for the resistance,” he continued, adding that with a weakened resistance axis, the resistance in Gaza is left to fend for itself – both politically and militarily.
Nevertheless, some hold out hope that the Palestinian resistance will hold strong, even symbolically, in staving off Israel’s attempts to swallow up more Palestinian land or force Gaza into a “bad deal.”
“Even if Israel breaks the axis of resistance, Gaza is a completely different scenario, because resistance is the people,” Issa said defiantly.
Abdulrahman echoed a similar sentiment, acknowledging that while regional developments will impact the Gaza resistance negatively, as he stated, he believes, or hopes, that the Palestinian resistance can “keep their struggle and prevent Israel from achieving its plans in Gaza. The resistance has been able to do that so far, despite the huge sacrifices.”
Will Cairo talks be different this time?
Despite conflicting beliefs around how regional events may impact Gaza, ongoing ceasefire talks in Cairo are leaving some room for hope, or at least cautious optimism.
Internal political talks taking place between Palestinian rival factions Hamas and Fatah, as well as the renewal of talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis under Egyptian mediation, are an indication to some that Israeli bombardment on Gaza, at least in its current state, may come to a close soon. Although the negotiations have not yet produced anything tangible on the ground and have not stopped the war thus far, the promising statements coming out of the negotiations give hope to the grieving families in the Gaza Strip.
In recent weeks, Hamas has announced major developments in the negotiations between itself and the Fatah movement, as the two factions work towards ending their divisions, and forming a committee to govern the Gaza Strip if the war stops.
Various sources also reported that Hamas has handed over the names of the living Israeli captives in the Gaza Strip, including some who hold American citizenship, indicating that a prisoner deal or exchange could also be reaching a critical stage. Despite reports indicating progress between Hamas and Israel, so far, it remains too early to tell just how close a deal may be to being reached,
Analyst Abdulrahman believes that while a ceasefire may be closer than ever before in the past year, a critical detail – whether or not the ceasefire will be permanent or temporary – remains to be seen.
Either way, he says, “people in Gaza are clinging to any glimmer of hope about a ceasefire, even if it is temporary.”