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After 470 days of death, a tentative cease-fire began on Sunday in Gaza. But Palestinians could not be sure that the war had ended, and Israelis fear that many hostages will still remain in Gaza.
- Jan. 19, 2025, 7:15 a.m. ET
As a truce took hold on Sunday in Gaza, potentially ending the longest and deadliest war in a century of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, two men used the same metaphor to describe how they felt.
“The weight on my chest has lifted,” said Ziad Obeid, a Gazan civil servant displaced several times during the war. “We have survived.”
“The rock lying on my heart has been removed,” said Dov Weissglas, a former Israeli politician. “We want to see the hostages home, period.”
But — both men also had a “but” — Mr. Obeid has not seen his damaged house in northern Gaza for more than a year. How bad, he wondered, is the damage? And who will rebuild a decimated Gaza?
Mr. Weissglas worried about the condition of the hostages set to be freed gradually over the next few weeks from dank quarters in the territory. And he grimaced about exchanging them for hundreds of Palestinian detainees, many of whom are serving life sentences for attacks on Israelis. “There is relief,” he said, “wrapped in caution, fears and concern.”
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