For the first time in nearly two years, Gaza has woken to something resembling silence. On the third day of the ceasefire, families wandered through the skeletal remains of their neighbourhoods, searching for traces of their past amid mountains of rubble. After 735 days of genocidal war, nearly half a million displaced residents have begun returning to Gaza City, not to homes, but to memories buried beneath the dust.

Civil defence workers, exhausted yet unyielding, continue to dig through the ruins in search of bodies. Over a hundred were recovered within the first 24 hours of the truce. Hospitals, already overwhelmed, struggle to treat the thousands who remain wounded or gravely ill, their pleas for medical supplies echoing across a region long cut off from adequate care. Meanwhile, convoys of aid trucks stand ready at Gaza’s southern crossings, carrying the essentials of survival, food, fuel, and medicine, into a place still trembling from devastation.

Beyond the ruins, diplomacy stirs. Preparations are under way for a prisoner exchange set to accompany the ceasefire’s implementation, a gesture that, for many, symbolises not peace, but the faint hope of renewal. The agreement marks an end to the bombardment, at least for now, and the beginning of what may be an even harder task: rebuilding a society stripped of its homes, schools, and the illusion of safety.

As leaders gather in Egypt for the Sharm El-Sheikh Peace Summit, the people of Gaza stand amid the ashes, cautious yet unwilling to surrender their hope. The guns have fallen silent, but the echoes of loss will take far longer to fade.