The announcement of the first phase of the ceasefire in Gaza brings a welcome moment of relief for exhausted, starved, and grieving Palestinians and a great relief to the families of all hostages—but it comes after more than two years and over 67,000 lost lives.
While we welcome the ceasefire, the end of conflict does not mark the end of people’s horrendous suffering. Palestinians in Gaza who survived the war are now doing so amid the ruins of what was once their homes and have immense medical, psychological, and material needs.
“The feeling of our colleagues and the people around us is one of hope—a lot of hope— that this nightmare will finally stop and they will be able to be at peace and recover from their physical and mental trauma,” says Jacob Granger, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) emergency coordinator in Gaza. “But there's also a lot of uncertainty of what is going to happen, what are the next steps.”
The ceasefire must be respected and sustained because it's the only way that will allow care to be provided at the scale people desperately need—something that was impossible under siege and bombardment. In the long term, we hope to see this ceasefire leading to efforts to rebuild the Strip, including restoring its shattered health care system.
More aid must enter and be distributed across the Strip immediately
After months of a near-total Israeli siege, the most basic necessities are still urgently needed in Gaza: medical equipment, medicines, food, water, fuel, and adequate shelter for 2 million people who will face the approaching winter without roofs over their heads.
This ceasefire must be accompanied by an immediate massive and sustained scale-up of aid into and across the Strip, including the north.
We urge the Israeli authorities to allow a sufficient and unimpeded flow of humanitarian assistance and to authorize medical evacuations for patients in need of urgent specialist care. At the same time, the UN-led humanitarian coordination mechanism must be reinstated to guarantee safe and impartial access to aid for those in need, wherever they are in the Gaza Strip.
