My Gaza is ready for peace. Hamas is trying to destroy it.
President Donald Trump’s ceasefire has split Gaza into two alternate realities on either side of the “yellow line” behind which the Israel Defense Forces have withdrawn under Phase 1 of the ceasefire deal. On one side is a Gaza that is desperate for Trump’s plan to succeed; on the other is a Gaza that is being pulled back into the abyss once again. It is impossible for these two Gazas to exist simultaneously for more than a moment in time, and soon enough one will consume the other. Fighting over the weekend underscores just how precarious the balance remains.
My Gaza, where I wish to live, exists between Israel and the yellow line. There, the war is over and change buzzes in the air. People have access to food, medicine and electricity. And other signs of normality are beginning to return, such as some children going back to school. This is the Gaza that is waiting with anticipation to work with a new civil administration and an international protection force that will keep the peace as Israel withdraws. Few there speak of Hamas with any warmth or positivity. For once they no longer have to.
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But on the other side of the yellow line exists another Gaza that will do anything to prevent this from happening. Over there the war continues, albeit not between Israel and Hamas but between Hamas and Gaza itself. In the nearly two weeks that have passed since Trump’s deal was signed, and in the absence of IDF soldiers, Hamas has emerged from its tunnel network and is reasserting control in the most violent manner possible, its reemergence accompanied by a terrifying bloodletting that targets any form of internal dissent, both real and imagined, past and present.
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