Now, the time has come to mourn in Gaza. Israeli-Filistine Conflict

It has been a week since the ceasefire was announced in Gaza. For the first time in 15 months, silence has been replaced by the continuous sound of the blasts. But this peace is not peace. It is a silence that shouts loss, destruction and sorrow – a stagnation in destruction, not its end. It feels as if standing between the ashes of a house, something, anything, which has survived, is searching for it.

The pictures coming from Gaza are going to scare. Children with listened eyes are standing in the debris of the place which once used to be their home. Parents hold the remains of toys, photos and clothing – the pieces of life that are no longer present. Every face tells the story of trauma and existence, interrupted and broken life. I barely see myself, but I force myself because going away seems like abandoning them. They are worth watching.

After the declaration of the ceasefire, when I called my mother, he said to me the first thing, “Now we can mourn.” Those words pierced me like a blade. There was no place for grief for months. The fear of adjacent death swallowed every awake moment, and left no place to mourn. When you are struggling to survive, how do you mourn what you have lost? But now, as soon as the bombs stop falling, the grief comes like a flood, tremendous and unbearable.

More than 47,000 people – men, women and children – are dead. Thirty -seven thousand souls were destroyed, their lives were stolen in unimaginable ways. More than 100,000 injured, many people became disabled for a lifetime. These figures have faces, dreams and families that will never be fulfilled again. The scale of loss is so big that it seems impossible to understand, but grief in Gaza is never abstract. It is individual, it is raw, and it is everywhere.

People in Gaza mourn for their loved ones, and they also mourn for their homes. The loss of a house is much more than the loss of the physical structure. A friend of mine in Gaza, who had lost his house, said to me, “A house is like your child. It takes many years to make it and you take care of it, always want it to look best.

In Gaza, people often make their home brick by brick, sometimes with their hands. Losing your home means safety, comfort, losing the place where love is shared and memories are made. A house is not just of bricks and carts; This is where life appears. Losing it is to lose a piece of its own, and countless families in Gaza have lost that piece again and again.

My parents’ house, the house that gave shelter to my childhood memories, has gone. By burning on the ground, it has now become a pile of ash and twisted metal. The houses of my six siblings have also been destroyed, their lives were uprooted and their walls were scattered like debris. Everything that survives is stories that we tell ourselves to survive – stories of flexibility, endurance, hope, perhaps. But they too now feel delicate.

Outside of Gaza, the people who are of us, the grief has increased even more than the guilt. The guilt of not being there, not tolerate terror like his loved ones, to live a life of relative security while suffering. This is an unbearable stress – want to be strong for them but feel completely helpless. I try to maintain the idea that my voice, my words can make a difference, but it also seems insufficient in front of the horrors of their pain.

My family’s loss is one of the thousands. The entire locality was destroyed, the community turned into dust. The scale of destruction is beyond comprehension. Schools, hospitals, mosques and houses – all have been converted into debris. His infrastructure has been taken away from Gaza, his economy is shattered, its people are in shock. And yet, somehow, they bear.

The flexibility of the Palestinian people is both inspiring and cardiac. Inspirational because they continue to dream, rebuilding, rebuilding, despite obstacles. The heart breaks is because no one should be so flexible. No one should bear the pain of this level only to survive.

But even though we are now feeling relieved, we know that any ceasefire is temporary by default. When the root cause of this ruin – possession – is left, how can it be something else? As long as Gaza is in a blockade, as long as the Palestinians are deprived of their freedom and respect, as long as their land is occupied, and as long as Israel is supported by the West to work with punishment, then The cycle of violence will continue till.

The ceasefire is not a solution; They are only interruption, break, a transient relief in the cycle of violence that has defined the reality of Gaza for a very long time. Without addressing the underlying injustice, they are cursed to fail, causing the endless cycle of Gaza destruction and despair.

True peace requires more than the end of the bombing. This requires blockade, possession and systemic oppression that has made life unbearable in Gaza.

Now when the bombs have stopped falling, the international community cannot look at. He should justify Israel for his actions. The work of reconstruction of Gaza is important, but the task of addressing the root causes of this struggle is more important. This requires political courage, moral clarity and unwavering commitment to justice. Anything less than this is betrayal with the people of Gaza.

For my family, the path ahead is long. They will rebuild, as they always do. They will find a way to create a new spirit of the house among the ruins. But the marks of this massacre will never disappear. My mother’s words – “Now we can mourn” – will always echo in my mind, which will be reminiscent of the huge human cost of this struggle.

As I wrote this, I am overwhelmed by a mixture of emotions: a glimpse of anger, sorrow and hope. To allow such atrocities to happen, anger on the world, lost lives and grief for destroyed houses, and hope that one day, my people will get peace. Till then, we mourn. We mourn for the dead, for the living, for the life we ​​knew once and for the life we ​​still dream.

The idea expressed in this article is the author’s own and not necessarily reflecting the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.