We were completely engrossed in a card game, sitting in front of one of the houses that had

electricity in the evening, when one of the neighbors told us the news about the ceasefire. He

said it would come into effect the next day around noon. We all looked up: those who were

absorbed in the game, and those who were sitting nearby, watching. Everyone looked up for a

moment—and then, somehow, we just went back to playing cards.

In the previous wars, news like that would have set off chanting and cheering on the streets of

Gaza: the chants of people who had escaped death after days of ferocious fighting. This time,

it wasn’t even exciting enough to stop a group of men from playing cards. The news had

come at a time when the very idea of a ceasefire—as a gateway to safety, to salvation—had

lost its meaning. It came after two years of relentless murder and harrowing devastation, after

bereavement had entered everyone’s lives. I would even venture to say that there is nobody in

Gaza who has not lost, at the very least, five people from their inner circle; not to mention the

fact that almost everybody, apart from a tiny fraction of people living in al-Wusta, has lost

their homes. And so, what does it mean for the war to end now, after loss has gotten the best

of us all?

What kind of meaning can be created from having escaped death after such a monstrou