I thought that joy would keep me awake after the ceasefire in Gaza was confirmed in the hours before dawn on October 10, but instead, tears did. I opened my phone to check on my people, only to find sorrow spreading everywhere. After two years of endless war, what poured out of many of us was not joy — it was the grief we had buried too long. There was no true cry of joy around me as there…
Source
As the ceasefire agreement tentatively holds and Palestinians return to their homes in hopes of rebuilding after Israel’s genocide, Gaza officials estimate that there are massive amounts of rubble and unexploded bombs that stand in the way of their efforts, potentially laying in wait to cause further harm. On Thursday, the Gaza Government Media Office reported that officials estimate that…
Source
After two years of Israel’s genocidal destruction of Gaza, Palestinians have welcomed the tenuous ceasefire that began last week. However, there is little hope that the ceasefire will lead to lasting peace or an end to the occupation. “There is no optimism,” one Gaza resident, Nusfat Modin, says. “You can’t negotiate with these people. A deal, no deal—we have no hope. No one—ask anyone.”
TRNN asked Gazans what they thought about the latest ceasefire deal. This is what they told us…
Credits:
Producers: Belal Awad, Leo Erhardt
Videographers: Ruwaida Amer, Mahmoud Al Mashharawi
Video Editor: Leo Erhardt
Transcript
NUSFAT MODIN:
The Sumud Flotilla is a very beautiful thing: to break the siege and to show the world who the Zionist occupiers are. They detained them, and people have seen what Ben Gvir did to them. These people are not terrorists. It’s not terrorism; it’s about breaking the siege. These are heroes of humanity and heroes of freedom.
ADAM KHIDR HAMMOUDEH:
These are the ones who embodied dignity and who responded to the call for help and the call of humanity. They brought this message of love, peace, and security to the people of Gaza.
ABU MUSTAFA AL ABID:
Free people—you are free people—you began something good, and you should continue on your path, steadfast. The whole world is with you, all free people are with you, and all nations are with you.
MAZEN ABBAS ABU JABAL:
This is not the first flotilla; there were many attempts before by peace-loving activists and supporters of the Palestinian cause around the world. Every time, they are faced with brute military force, with the support, approval and blessing of the U.S., through the Israeli navy, which abducted and
This story originally appeared in Mondoweiss on Oct. 10, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
As the genocide in Gaza began its third year, there was some hope — one can’t really call it optimism — that the end might finally be in sight. Wednesday evening, the United States announced that Hamas and other Palestinian factions had accepted the initial parts of U.S. President Donald Trump’s 20-Point Plan. Specifically, they accepted the exchange of hostages and the first redeployment of Israeli military forces, along with an end to Israel’s offensive actions.
Yet, while Palestinians, especially in Gaza, celebrate, hope is tempered with the experience of two years of temporary pauses, which were just limited downscales of Israel’s violence, after which the slaughter returned with even greater ferocity than before.
Trump’s “20-Point Plan” has some potential for truly ending the genocide. But that potential is limited by its vagueness and its dependence on the United States to apply and maintain pressure on Israel.
Trump’s plan and motivations
Trump’s plan explicitly disregards the rights of the Palestinian people. It establishes foreign rule over an ostensibly Palestinian technocratic administrative apparatus but requires that current Palestinian representatives — in this case, Hamas, a body that has never been, nor ever claimed to be, representative of the entire Palestinian nation — agree to that foreign rule. Vague allusions to the possibility that there might one day be a path to a mythical Palestinian state do little to mitigate this reality.
Ironically, and despite the fact that Hamas has already made it clear that they have neither the authority nor the willingness to agree to such a thing, this demand might be the very reason the
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Oct. 09, 2025. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Palestinian civilians and aid groups in Gaza expressed “jubilation” along with underlying caution and “skepticism,” as one local reporter said, on Thursday following the news that Hamas and Israel had come to an agreement to end Israel’s two-year assault on the exclave.
Israel is expected to withdraw troops to an agreed-upon line and to allow an influx of aid into Gaza along with releasing Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israeli hostages.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that a ceasefire would take effect later in the day, “once the government convenes and approves the deal,” but Nour Odeh reported at Al Jazeera that “that is not stopping the celebrations” of the news that Israel’s relentless destruction of Gaza was expected to soon come to a halt.
“People were screaming in the streets, because after two years of bombings and destruction and loss, finally they will sign the ceasefire [deal],” Laila Al Shana, a project manager for Palestinian grassroots aid group Humans To Be in Gaza, told Al Jazeera. “I hope they can maintain this deal.”
Tareq Abu Azzoum, a reporter for the outlet in az-Zawayda, central Gaza, said there was “an undeniable collective sense of relief seen here in Gaza” on Thursday following President Donald Trump’s announcement that Hamas and Israel had reached a deal on the first phase of the 20-point peace plan Trump proposed last week.
Scenes of celebration at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza as news of the ceasefire spread earlier this morning. pic.twitter.com/pjI1FyGImL— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) October 9, 2025
“People were celebrating, and there were very obvious scenes of jubilation across
Intent to destroy all or part of a group is required to meet the criteria of genocide, and Israeli officials have made their intentions towards the people of Gaza explicitly clear, says Phyllis Bennis. In this discussion of her new book, Understanding Palestine & Israel, she explains how other recognized genocides have been defined, the influence of the Holocaust and its aftermath on Zionism and Jewish identity, and why the ceasefire movement indicates a change in the movement for Palestinian rights.
Guests:
Phyllis Bennis is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, where she also serves as co-director of the New Internationalism Project. She is a founding member of the US Campaign to End Israeli Occupation and served for six years on the national board of Jewish Voice for Peace. She is the author of numerous books, including Understanding Palestine & Israel.
Credits:
Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Stephen Frank
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Marc Steiner:
Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here in the World News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s good to have you all with this as we open our program today. Somewhere between 66,000 and 80,000 people have been buried under the rubble and Gaza and killed the majority of women and children. Most of the infrastructure has been destroyed. Over 1.2 million people face starvation and seemingly nothing is being done to end this massacre. Many of the most profound voices and leaders of the fight against the war in Gaza are members of the Jewish community who say not in our name. And today we’re