When the bombs in Gaza stop, the true pain starts
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/10/10/when-the-bombs-in-gaza-stop-the-true-pain-starts
After US President Trump announced the ceasefire deal, for a moment it seemed as if Gaza’s long nightmare was coming to an end.
But the ceasefire didn’t bring peace; it only shifted the suffering into a quieter, more insidious form, where the real damage from the rubble began to settle into Gaza’s weary soul. Years of relentless shelling had built up fear and heartbreak that no outsider could erase.
During those two brutal years of bombing and near-total destruction, everyone in Gaza was focused on one thing: Staying alive.
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Then, when the explosions finally eased, a quieter kind of pain crept in: All the grief we had buried to get through the chaos. Almost everyone had someone torn away, and those pushed-aside memories came rushing back with a force that took the breath out of us. As soon as the rockets fell quiet, another fight began inside people’s chests, one full of mourning, flashbacks and relentless mental anguish. On the surface, it looked like the war was over, but it wasn’t. It was far messier than that. Even when the shelling eased, the emotional wounds kept bleeding.
When the noise finally faded, people began to ask the questions they had forced themselves to ignore. They already knew the answers – who was gone, who would not be coming back – but saying the words out loud made it real. The silence that followed was heavier than any explosion they had survived. That silence made the truth impossible to avoid. It revealed the permanence of loss and the scale of what had vanished. There were holes everywhere, in homes, in streets, in hearts, and there was no way to fill them.
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It will take several generations to heal from genocide, it will be a long painful process.
Basically everyone in Gaza has been stuck in the first stage of grief, denial. Focus on survival. Next comes anger :/
Relief and disbelief greet Gaza ceasefire announcement in Israel
Across Israeli society, the reaction to the news of a Gaza ceasefire deal has been almost uniform: Joy.
Two years of war on Gaza have fractured Israeli society. The minority who have openly opposed Israel’s killing of more than 67,000 Palestinians say they have been ostracised, while those who cheered on what experts have confirmed is a genocide have been left angered by growing international condemnation of Israel’s aggression.
“I cried when I got the news,” Israeli political analyst Nimrod Flaschenberg said. “It’s really big. It’s like there’s a complete emotional unravelling across Israel; it’s like people are decompressing. There’s just massive, massive relief.”
Maybe next will come the realization of what they have done... And then anger as well :/ Israeli society has been in denial for 2 years as well.
It will be a long road to acceptance.
