“This is a great day for the world,” the U.S. president said when the first phase of a ceasefire agreement was announced. “This is a wonderful day, a wonderful day for everybody.”

It has taken two years of unrelenting genocide for us to finally hear this. I keep wondering: Is it real? Might our suffering actually end soon?

This partial ceasefire deal comes amid the most horrific phase the Gaza Strip has witnessed since the war began. Gaza City has been under a rapidly advancing Israeli occupation, putting the roughly 200,000 people who remain there into unimaginable circumstances. According to the latest reports, Israel has displaced nearly 900,000 people from the city.

I became one of them just one month ago. It feels like a whole year. I left everything behind and fled to the south, where Israel has said it would be safer, but bombs still rain down around us. Now, the thought of returning home again brings life back into me. It brings peace even for a rare moment.

My heart pounded as I followed the news last night. It was “the final minutes,” all the channels reported. Everyone was ready to sign. I watched my people finally smile — finally feel a moment of comfort — after two long years of sadness and grief.

Why did it take two full years? Were they waiting for us to suffer even more? Children, women, and men have been killed in this genocide. Generations are growing up and being born amid these unfathomable horrors. This war has shaped new identities — minds and hearts forged in pain, loss, and resilience.

Now, Israel expects us to feel grateful for obtaining our basic rights to life and liberty — as if they were favors, not ordinary human rights.

In the tent camps where I am now displaced, the word “ceasefire” feels empty. The last round of ceasefire negotiations began with enthusiasm. It ended with my family displaced in a tent.

Ceasefire doesn’t mean the end of our suffering. It is simply a step toward justice after endless days and nights filled with fear and violence against us in Gaza. It doesn’t bring back the schools, universities, hospitals, streets, or homes that Israel bombed. It cannot heal the trauma we carry from those long nights of pain and terror. The sounds of drones and explosions will forever echo in our minds. A ceasefire cannot erase that.