Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip, Palestine – Palestinians in the Gaza Strip woke up on Thursday to the sound of renewed bombing, adding trepidation to the joy they felt at the news that a ceasefire had been agreed between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas the night before.
They hope that announcement will mean an end to Israel’s 15-month war, which has killed more than 46,700 Palestinians and left thousands more missing. But their memories of the war will not go away any time soon.
In Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, many people are displaced from other areas of the enclave after fleeing their homes in the wake of Israeli attacks or Israeli orders to leave or face bombing.
They have struggled to survive. Many have lost their nearest and dearest and feel lucky to be alive. But what comes next is still unknown. And with the devastation across Gaza so evident and Israel seemingly unwilling to leave the territory alone, many pitfalls lie ahead in the future.
Al Jazeera spoke to people in Deir el-Balah the day after Wednesday’s announcement of the ceasefire as they await its implementation on Sunday. Here’s what they had to say:
More trauma is yet to come
Nahed al-Wer is a psychiatrist displaced with his family from the Bureij refugee camp at the start of the war after his home was destroyed. He now works at the Deir el-Balah clinic and also volunteers in his own time to meet people seeking psychological help for the traumas they have gone through during the war.
It feels very nice. We’re so happy. It feels like it’s Eid. We hope this feeling remains forever and that we don’t see any more bloodshed. We hope that we don’t see it again and that we won’t have to live through this experience again. We all lost people. I lost my brother, my nephew, my other nephew and another relative.
I’m worried that in the coming days we will see more escalation. This is the nature of the Israeli politicians. Before signing a ceasefire or before a ceasefire comes into effect, they continuously try to escalate the killing more and more. The pace of the killing intensifies. In 2014, on the last day of the war, I lost my sister and her children.
There is still a great concern that the Israeli leadership might backtrack on agreements, and the pace of the killings has increased in the last two or three days, so I pray to God that this does not happen.
After the war, there will be a large number of people suffering from very difficult psychological conditions – from tensions and phobias and the fears they have lived through. It’s possible that these conditions and psychological fatigue could even get worse and develop beyond depression.
There must be treatment for these people. Even a few days ago, I had a case of an elderly woman whose son passed away. She was suffering from severe mental health problems and began psychiatry sessions to aid her situation.
‘We lost many dear and precious people’
Yasmeen al-Helo is a mother of one originally from Shujayea, a suburb of Gaza City. She was displaced to Deir el-Balah a year ago.
Honestly, my feelings are indescribable. It was a great joy, I cried and was happy at the same time. I cried over the things that happened to us. It wasn’t easy, and there is a lot of sadness. People’s hearts are wounded. The experience was a heavy burden and very difficult.
We lost people. Some are missing, some were take