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DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: Bassil Naggar can finally sleep without getting jolted awake by the sounds of Israeli airstrikes.
For Naggar and his displaced family, and for many in Gaza facing similar challenges, the ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war has provided a much-needed respite from a two-year war that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and left much of the territory in ruins.
But many daily struggles, big and small, persist — from how to put an actual roof over one’s head and what to wear as winter approaches, to how to secure proper food, to worries over whether the fragile ceasefire will hold.
The extent of some of the personal and communal losses has become clearer since the ceasefire went into effect on Oct. 10, allowing many to return to their neighborhoods and discover what remains of their homes.
“Life after the ceasefire is still anxious. Is the war really over?” said Naggar, who has been displaced about a dozen times since the war began.
Fueling his fears are memories of the deadly Israeli airstrikes in March that shattered an earlier truce.
In the coastal area of Muwasi, crowded with displaced Palestinians, Naggar’s tent has started to wear thin. He said his home in eastern Khan Younis has been burned. He worries about how his family can keep warm in winter.
They’ve been surviving mostly on canned food, such as fava beans and chickpeas. He said he’s starting to see instant noodles and potato chips in the market. Prices have come down some, but remain too expensive, he added.
The World Food Program is moving “swiftly to scale up food assistance and reach families who have endured months of blockade, displacement and hunger,” spokesperson Abeer Etefa said Friday in Geneva.
“We’re still below what we need, but we’re getting there,” Etefa said.
Challenges she cited include damaged infrastructure and the need for more open crossings into Gaza.
Earlier in the week, the entrance of desperately needed humanitarian aid into Gaza was paused for two days for the exchange of hostages and prisoners and for a Jewish holiday. Israel had also threatened to reduce the number of trucks allowed into Gaza, saying Hamas was too slow to return remaining bodies of hostages.
Under the ceasefire agreement, hundreds of trucks are to be allowed to enter Gaza daily. COGAT, the Israeli military body overseeing humanitarian aid, did not respond to a query about how many trucks carrying aid have made it into Gaza since the ceasefire.
Naggar said he hasn’t noticed a significant change in the amount of aid available since the ceasefire started.
In the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that sparked the war, Hamas-led militants abducted 251 people, and killed around 1,200.
In Israel’s ensuing offensive, nearly 68,000 Palestinians were killed in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government. The ministry maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by UN agencies and independent experts.
On Thursday, hardships were on display at a crowded charity kitchen in the central city of Deir Al-Balah, where scores of Palestinians held bowls and pots as they waited in front of large vats of rice. One woman displaced from Khan Younis, Fatima Shaat, said she waited for six hours for food.
Basma Abu Al-Kheir said while some goods have come in, “there is no possibility of buying what we want” because prices are too high.
In Deir Al-Balah, Fida Ziyad said tomatoes, cucumbers, and eggplants are available at the market, but poultry and meat are in short supply — and all of it costs more than it did before the war. Ziyad, who lost her home in northern Gaza, said she’s wary of what lies ahead, with many thorny issues about Gaza still unresolved.
For many, normalcy remains elusive.
After the ceasefire, Mohamed Samy went back to check on his home in Jabaliya to find it reduced to rubble. Samy, who now lives in Gaza City, said much of his situation hasn’t changed since the ceasefire.
“Even drinking water, I have to walk, sometimes up to an hour, to get to the water truck.”
In August, the world’s leading authority on food crises said Gaza City was gripped by famine, which the group warned then was likely to spread without a ceasefire and an end to restrictions on humanitarian aid. At the time, Israel rejected the report, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling it an “outright lie.”
Before then, aid groups had warned for months that Israel’s restrictions of food and other aid into Gaza, and its military offensive, were causing starvation among Palestinian civilians, particularly children.
Since the beginning of the ceasefire, at least nine humanitarian organizations have gradually resumed services in Gaza City and parts of northern Gaza for displaced families and returnees, according to a UN humanitarian affairs report released Thursday.
In Deir Al-Balah, Ayman Abu Saif still relies on charity kitchens for food.
“It’s either rice or pasta,” said Abu Saif, who once worked in the hospitality and restaurants fields and has been repeatedly displaced during the war.
“The prices in the market are now more reasonable,” he said. That has led to a small win: He bought his children three apples for the first time in more than a year.
He remains uncertain about returning to where he lived in Gaza City, saying he saw a photo of his home destroyed. And it’s not just his home that’s gone.
“There is no water and no infrastructure. I cannot go back even if I want to.”
In a glimpse of the challenges ahead, many displaced Palestinians returning to their neighborhoods found themselves walking through collapsed, pockmarked and hollowed out buildings and sifting through debris for traces of their past lives.
Abu Saif laments the toll the war has taken on his children — and fears for their future.
“It’s good that the bloodshed has stopped, but we have lost everything,” he said.
His six-year-old-son hasn’t received a proper education and probably won’t anytime soon, he said.
“I do not want my kids to think that this is what life is, to run behind a charity kitchen to get food, or walk lengthy miles to get clean water,” said Abu Saif. “This is not reality and this is not what life is, and I am not sure life in Gaza will change soon.”

DOHA: Hamas intends to maintain security control in Gaza during an interim period, a senior Hamas official told Reuters, adding he could not commit to the group disarming — positions that reflect the difficulties facing US plans to secure an end to the war.
Hamas politburo member Mohammed Nazzal also said the group was ready for a ceasefire of up to five years to rebuild devastated Gaza, with guarantees for what happens afterwards depending on Palestinians being given “horizons and hope” for statehood.
Speaking to Reuters in an interview from Doha, where Hamas politicians have long resided, Nazzal defended the group’s crackdown in Gaza, where it carried out public executions on Monday. There were always “exceptional measures” during war and those executed were criminals guilty of killing, he said.

PRESSURE TO DISARM
While Hamas has broadly expressed these views before, the timing of Nazzal’s comments demonstrates the major obstacles obstructing efforts to cement a full end to the war in Gaza, days after the first phase of the ceasefire was agreed.
They point to big gaps between Hamas’ positions and US President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza, ahead of negotiations expected to address Hamas’ weapons and how Gaza is governed.
Asked for comment on Nazzal’s remarks, the Israeli prime minister’s office said Israel was committed to the ceasefire agreement and continued to uphold and fulfil its side of the plan.
“Hamas is supposed to release all hostages in stage 1. It has not. Hamas knows where the bodies of our hostages are. Hamas are to be disarmed under this agreement. No ifs, no buts. They have not. Hamas need to adhere to the 20-point plan. They are running out of time,” it said in a statement to Reuters.
Trump’s September 29 plan called for Hamas to immediately return all hostages before committing to disarmament and ceding governance of Gaza to a technocratic committee overseen by an international transitional body.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supported the plan, saying it would dismantle Hamas’ military capabilities, end its political rule, and ensure that Gaza would never again pose a threat to Israel.
Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people and abducted another 251 during the October 7 attacks on Israel that triggered the war, according to Israeli tallies. Israel’s military response killed nearly 68,000 people in Gaza, according to local authorities. Pummelled by Israel in the war, the Palestinian Islamist group is under intense pressure to disarm and surrender control of Gaza or risk a resumption of the conflict.
Asked if Hamas would give up its arms, Nazzal, speaking on Wednesday, said: “I can’t answer with a yes or no. Frankly, it depends on the nature of the project. The disarmament project you’re talking about, what does it mean? To whom will the weapons be handed over?“
He added that issues to be discussed in the next phase of negotiations, including weapons, concerned not only Hamas but other armed Palestinian groups, and would require Palestinians more broadly to reach a position.
Asked for its response to Nazzal’s remarks, the White House directed Reuters to comments by Trump on Thursday.
“We have a commitment from them and I assume they’re going to honor their commitment,” Trump said, noting that Hamas had returned more bodies but without elaborating on the issue of it disarming or its interim presence on the ground. Nazzal also said the group had no interest in keeping the remaining bodies of deceased hostages seized in the October 7, 2023 attacks.
Hamas has handed over at least nine out of 28 bodies. It was encountering technical problems recovering more, he said, adding that international parties such as Turkiye or the US would help search if needed.
A senior Turkish official said last week that Turkiye would take part in a joint task force along with Israel, the US, Qatar and Egypt to locate the bodies. Hamas agreed on October 4 to release the hostages and hand over governance to a technocratic committee, but said other matters needed to be addressed within a wider Palestinian framework. It released all living hostages on Monday.
Nazzal said the phase two negotiations would begin soon.

GOALS OF ELECTIONS, ‘HOPE’ FOR PALESTINIANS
On Tuesday, Trump said he had communicated to Hamas that it must disarm or it would be forced to. Trump has also suggested Hamas was given temporary approval for internal security operations in Gaza, and has endorsed Hamas killing members of gangs.
Noting Trump’s remarks, Nazzal said there was an understanding regarding Hamas’ presence on the ground, without specifying among whom, indicating it was necessary to protect aid trucks from thieves and armed gangs.
“This is a transitional phase. Civilly, there will be a technocratic administration as I said. On the ground, Hamas will be present,” he said. After the transitional phase, there should be elections, he said. Nazzal said mediators had not discussed with the group an international stabilization force for Gaza, which was proposed in Trump’s ceasefire plan.
Hamas’ founding charter called for the destruction of Israel, although the group’s leaders have at times offered a long-term truce with Israel in return for a viable Palestinian state on all Palestinian territory occupied by Israel in the 1967 war.
Israel regards this position as a ruse.
Nazzal said Hamas had suggested a long-term truce in meetings with US officials, and wanted a truce of at least three to five years to rebuild the Gaza Strip. “The goal isn’t to prepare for a future war.”
Beyond that period, guarantees for the future would require states to “provide horizons and hope for the Palestinian people,” he said.
“The Palestinian people want an independent Palestinian state,” he added.