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GAZA: Children cheer in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip on Jan 19, 2025, shortly before a ceasefire deal was implemented. (Right). - AFP photos
GAZA: Children cheer in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip on Jan 19, 2025, shortly before a ceasefire deal was implemented. (Right). - AFP photos

GAZA STANDS TALL

Jubilation as guns fall silent despite last-minute Zionist onslaught

GAZA: Palestinians burst into the streets to celebrate and return to the rubble of their bombed-out homes on Sunday after a ceasefire deal halted fighting in Gaza, and three female captives freed by Hamas were reunited with their families inside the Zionist entity. Armed Hamas fighters drove through the southern city of Khan Younis with crowds cheering and chanting. In the north of the territory, bombed into oblivion in the war’s most intense fighting, people picked their way on narrow roads through a devastated landscape of rubble and twisted metal.

“I feel like at last I found some water to drink after being lost in the desert for 15 months,” Aya, a displaced woman from Gaza City who has been sheltering in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip for over a year, said after the fighting stopped. “I feel alive again.” In the Zionist-occupied West Bank, buses were awaiting the release of Palestinian prisoners from Zionist detention. Hamas said the first group to be freed in exchange for the hostages includes 69 women and 21 teenage boys.

In Tel Aviv, hundreds of Zionists in a square outside the defense headquarters watched a live broadcast from Gaza showing the captive release on a giant screen. The crowd cheered, embraced and wept as three female hostages could be seen getting into a Red Cross vehicle surrounded by armed Hamas fighters. Soon after, the Zionist military said Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari had been reunited with their mothers at a meeting point inside the Zionist entity.

The first phase of the truce in the 15-month-old war between the Zionist entity and Hamas took effect following a three-hour delay during which Zionist warplanes and artillery pounded the Gaza Strip. That last-minute Zionist blitz killed 13 people, according to Palestinian health authorities. More than 47,000 Palestinians have since been killed in Zionist attacks that reduced the Gaza Strip to a wasteland, according to medical officials in the enclave. Nearly the entire 2.3 million population of the enclave is homeless.

The Zionist entity blamed Hamas for being late to deliver the names of captives it would free. Hamas said the holdup in providing the list was a technical glitch. The armed wing of Hamas said it would observe a ceasefire in Gaza as long as the Zionist entity does the same, hours after the truce took effect.

“Today the guns in Gaza have gone silent,” US President Joe Biden said on his last full day in office, welcoming a truce that had eluded US diplomacy for more than a year. “The road to this deal has been not easy at all, it was a long road,” Biden said. “But we’ve reached this point today because of the pressure (the Zionist entity) built on Hamas, backed by the United States.”

The truce calls for fighting to stop, aid to be sent in to Gaza and 33 of the 98 Zionist and foreign captives still held there to go free over the six-week first phase in return for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held in Zionist jails. For Hamas, the truce could provide an opportunity to emerge from the shadows after 15 months in hiding. Hamas policemen dressed in blue police uniforms swiftly deployed in some areas.

People who had gathered to cheer the fighters chanted “Greetings to Al-Qassam Brigades” – the group’s armed wing. “All the resistance factions are staying in spite of (Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu,” one fighter told Reuters. “This is a ceasefire, a full and comprehensive one God willing, and there will be no return to war in spite of him.”

“We and the resistance factions declare our full commitment to the ceasefire agreement, while stressing that all of this is contingent on the enemy’s commitment,” said Abu Obeida, spokesman for the Ezzedine Al-Qassam armed wing, in a video message. He also warned that the Zionist entity’s “continued occupation of our land will affect the entire region and the world”. He added that the international community’s involvement in what he called the occupation of Gaza “will be a disaster for the occupation and all its supporters”.

The ceasefire agreement follows months of on-off negotiations brokered by Egypt, Qatar and the United States, and comes into effect on the eve of the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump, who had said there would be “hell to pay” unless captives were freed before he took office. There is no detailed plan in place to govern Gaza after the war, much less rebuild it. Any return of Hamas to control in Gaza will test the commitment to the truce of the Zionist entity, which has said it will resume the war unless the militant group which has run the enclave since 2007 is fully dismantled.

Hardline National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir quit the cabinet on Sunday over the ceasefire, though his party said it would not try to bring down Netanyahu’s government. The other most prominent hardliner, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, remained in the government for now but said he would quit if the war ends without Hamas completely destroyed. Trump’s national security adviser-designate, Mike Waltz, said that if Hamas reneges on the agreement, the United States will support the Zionist entity “in doing what it has to do”. “Hamas will never govern Gaza. That is completely unacceptable.”

The streets in shattered Gaza City in the north of the territory were already busy with groups of people waving the Palestinian flag and filming the scenes on their mobile phones. Several carts loaded with household possessions traveled down a thoroughfare scattered with rubble and debris. Gaza City resident Ahmed Abu Ayham, 40, sheltering with his family in Khan Yunis, said that while the ceasefire may have spared lives, the loss of lives and scale of destruction made it no time for celebrations. “We are in pain, deep pain and it is time to hug one another and cry,” he said.

Long lines of trucks carrying fuel and aid supplies queued up at border crossings in the hours before the ceasefire was due to take effect. The World Food Program said they began to cross on Sunday morning. An Egyptian source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said “260 trucks of aid and 16 of fuel” entered on Sunday. The deal requires 600 truckloads of aid to be allowed into Gaza every day of the initial six-week ceasefire, including 50 carrying fuel. Half of the 600 aid trucks would be delivered to Gaza’s north, where experts have warned famine is imminent.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcomed the truce, saying on X “it is imperative that this ceasefire removes the significant security and political obstacles to delivering aid”. Aid workers say northern Gaza was particularly hard-hit, lacking all essentials including food, shelter and water. Jonathan Whittall, interim chief of the UN’s OCHA humanitarian agency for the Palestinian territories, said on X that the first trucks started entering following the truce, after “a massive effort” to prepare for a surge of aid across the territory. - Agencies

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