(RNS) — When Terry Ahwal, a Palestinian American living near Detroit, Michigan, learned Israel and Hamas had reached a ceasefire deal, a flood of emotions washed over her.
She felt relieved that the 15-month war might end soon but unsure whether the deal would bring long-lasting peace and include solutions to rebuild Gaza.
“I am cautiously optimistic. Any time there is a cessation of violence, it’s a welcome thing, but having lived through too many Israeli ceasefires, I am skeptical, and I’m monitoring with hope,” said Ahwal, who grew up in the West Bank and serves as president of the American Federation of Ramallah Palestine.
Her relatives in Palestine celebrated the news, though they are also waiting to see how the deal will unfold and whether the peace will last. “They are on their edge every step of the way, not knowing what’s going to happen,” she said.
For Palestinian Americans around the country, the news of a ceasefire was bittersweet. After a year and a half of watching their homeland demolished and hearing news of loved ones lost, many consider the deal long overdue. Nationwide, Palestinian communities celebrated the promised truce and release of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons but remain angry that so many Palestinians were killed before an agreement was reached.
The 15-monthlong conflict has claimed the lives of more than 46,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry and U.N. estimates. Ninety percent of the Gaza population has been displaced, many repeatedly, and faced threats of famine and disease, while the territory’s infrastructure has been decimated.
Announced on Wednesday (Jan. 15), the ceasefire deal supervised by the Biden administration and Qatar is set to come into effect as soon as Sunday. The first phase of the deal will prompt a 42-day pause in the fighting and allow for the release of 33 Israeli hostages held by Hamas, most of them women and children. In exchange, hundreds of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons will be freed. Hundreds of thousands of displaced Gazans will also be allowed to return to what remains of their homes, and humanitarian aid will be re-allowed into the war-ravaged territory. Israel must also pull back its troops closer to the Israel-Gaza border. On Friday, Prime Minister Netanyahu gathered his security cabinet to approve the deal.
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For Ahwal, the agreement is a “small respite” after the nightmarish year. Hearing the news again and again that someone she knew in Gaza had been killed or injured has taken a toll, especially knowing Israel received military and financial support from the American government.
“It’s been a horrific time watching genocide on your screen and watching our country being complicit in sending bombs. It was just unimaginable,” she said, adding, “we used to say we are complicit with genocide. The issue is we’re not complicit. We are the actors of genocide.”
Now, Ahwal said her community is only thinking about rebuilding Gaza. As the fighting stops, she said, residents are holding their breath as they prepare to uncover the scope of devastation brought by the war. “Nobody knows what is under the rubble,” said Ahwal.
She also worries about the long-lasting effects of the war on the territory, the fate of the 1.9 million displaced refugees, and the 85,000 people wounded, including the untold thousands of Gazans who have lost limbs in the conflict. Ahwal also feared the environmental consequences of the war on Gaza’s agriculture, wondering if the large amount of bombs dropped on the territory altered the quality of Gaza’s soil.
Yet, she believes Palestinians will rebuild the strip. “One thing about Gaza and the one thing about the Palestinians, if they have one breath in their life, that breath is going to be focusing on, how are we going to rebuild with or without tools, with or without the international community,” she said.
Anwar Arafat, a Palestinian American Imam in Memphis, Tennessee, said he welcomed the news with great joy but remained skeptical. “We’re happy that something is being done, but I’m not treating it like a victory or a big win. It’s not the win that it seems to be,” said Arafat, who still waits to see whether the deal will materialize and bring long-lasting peace.
He also lamented that so many died before the two sides could reach agreement. “It just tells me that Palestinian lives are very cheap to the people,” he said. “I’m heartbroken for all the people that needlessly have been killed and murdered and the destruction that has happened.”
FILE – Palestinians inspect the damage of buildings destroyed by Israeli airstrikes on Jabaliya refugee camp on the outskirts of Gaza City, Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2023. (AP Photo/Abdul Qader Sabbah, File)
Over the past year, Arafat’s childhood house in Gaza City, the largest city in the strip, was destroyed in Israeli airstrikes. He has been in constant communication with his family, many of whom are still in Gaza. A few family members were able to evacuate to Egypt, he said. “We’ve been living and breathing this war for the past 15 months.”
Munther Isaac, a Lutheran pastor based in Bethlehem in the West Bank, also said the news brought mixed emotions in a statement posted on X on Friday (Jan. 17). Isaac, who is Palestinian, quoted the Bible book of Amos in his statement, referring to a verse celebrating justice and righteousness.
“To begin with, I am still cautious: I will believe it when I see it. But, hoping that the ceasefire materializes, we can’t but feel relieved and grateful,” wrote Isaac in the post. “We have been praying and pleading for a ceasefire for months.”
The pastor, who runs Christ at the Checkpoint, an organization dedicated to raising awareness on the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, also noted the ceasefire can’t be the end goal.
“At the same time, we can’t help but feel angry and frustrated that it took this long. Gazans have suffered a lot. They deserve to simply live in their homeland. Palestinians deserve to live in dignity and peace in their homeland.”
Since the war broke out on Oct. 7, 2023, after Hamas militants killed 1,200 people and abducted 250 hostages in southern Israel, the Biden administration has come under fire for its support of Israel’s military response to the attack.
Ahwal criticized the Biden administration for presenting the deal as one of their achievements, arguing “what he did, he could have done 15 months ago.”
Over the past year, she reached out to President Biden numerous times to address his handling of the war. Like her, many Muslim and Arab Americans had pledged not to vote for President Biden and Vice-President Harris in the 2024 presidential election to sanction the administration’s handling of the war.
The Abandon Biden campaign, launched in November 2023, rallied many of these disillusioned voters. Farah Khan, co-chair of Michigan’s Abandon Biden campaign, applauded the news but said the deal was long overdue.
“It was long-awaited, and it was a relief that it had happened already. It means it should have happened a long time ago. It took so long for this to happen, but it happened,” she said.
Khan said she believed the Trump administration also played a role in advancing negotiations. She says there will be a lot of eyes on the next administration — who racked up support in the last days of the campaign among Arab American and Muslim voters — to see whether they will deliver on the promise to end the war.
Mahmoud Muheisin, acting president of the Muslim Coalition at the University of Michigan – Dearborn, says he hopes the ceasefire holds.
“Though we are hopeful for the ceasefire, we acknowledge the fact that it’s not, it’s not the end. It is a step in the right direction. And there’s still a lot of work to be done. Only time can see whether you know Trump in office is a good thing for the movement or a bad thing,” he says.
He said he voted for Jill Stein in the presidential election, in frustration over how both major parties were handling the war in Gaza.
A Palestinian American, Muheisin said that after the news broke about the ceasefire, he connected with family and friends in Gaza, who told him they had noticed that some planes withdrew from the skies, but they continued to hear airstrikes. Officials say over 100 people were killed in Gaza after the initial ceasefire deal was announced.
Dr. Hassan Abdel Salam, a founding member of the Abandon Biden Coalition, said even though he’s enthusiastic about the news of the ceasefire and greeted Trump’s contribution to the negotiations, he said the alliance will not give “full-fledged support to Trump” as they wait to see what the president-elect’s solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are and to the rebuilding of Gaza.
When he learned about the news, Salam instinctively kneeled in prayer to observe the protestation of gratitude, an Islamic prayer expressing gratefulness. On Friday morning, he delivered the Khutbah, the Friday prayer sermon, in a Mosque he had visited during the campaign to celebrate what he saw as a victory. He thanked the faithful for their commitment to hold the Biden administration accountable and for demanding a ceasefire deal.
On Wednesday, hours after news of the deal broke, the U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USCPN), an Illinois-based organization, called out supporters to gather in Bridgeview, a Chicago suburb known as “Little Palestine” for its sizable Palestinian population.
In a statement released on Wednesday, the organization described the ceasefire as a “historic victory for our people and our righteous resistance,” highlighting that the Israeli government had to cede on certain terms of the agreement, like the complete withdrawal from the territory during the second phase of the deal.
As they celebrated the news, the organization also acknowledged the war has raised awareness of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They applauded the gains made by the pro-Palestinian movement worldwide.
“We will never forget the millions of people marching in the streets of dozens of countries across six continents,” read the statement that also applauded the student encampment movement that spread across American campuses in spring 2024.
In a statement posted on X on Wednesday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the country’s largest Muslim civil rights organization, said it commended President Trump for “pushing for a ceasefire deal and reportedly warning Netanyahu that Israel, too, would face consequences for continuing to refuse to make a deal.”
While it lambasted the Biden administration for its ineffective contribution to the negotiations, saying it deserves “zero credit for this belated deal,” the organization expressed its hopes that President Trump would prioritize lasting peace in Gaza and an end to the occupation of Palestinian territories.
“The Biden administration’s legacy is soaked with the blood of countless Palestinian men, women, and children, as well as an untold number of captives who have also been killed in Israel’s indiscriminate bombing campaign with U.S. support,” wrote the organization in its statement.
CAIR’s statement also pointed out that the subsequent phases of the ceasefire agreement should include steps to hold Israeli and American officials accountable for war crimes committed in Gaza.
Ahwal, who is Catholic, said she prayed for lasting peace and remained hopeful it would come soon. “The moment you start to lose hope and start hating, then not only did you lose your country, but you also lose your soul, and you lose your life, and that is something you do not ever give to the enemy,” she said.
Nargis Rahman, of NPR member station WDET News, contributed to this report from Dearborn, Michigan.
