Hope amid ruins The day the Gaza ceasefire finally arrived

From a ridge on the western edge of Sderot, the ruins of Gaza loom.

- Bethan McKernan SDEROT

Less than a kilometre separates the Israeli town and the outskirts of the Palestinian territory, but after 471 days of war, the other side of the fence from Sderot's shrubby green dunes resembles a dystopian parallel universe.

A few minutes before along-awaited ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict was supposed to begin at 8.30am local time last Sunday, the morning quiet was shattered by an Israeli airstrike on Beit Hanoun, the Gaza town visible from the ridge.

The Guardian last visited Beit Hanoun three days before the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. The area's orchards were full of guava and the last of the season's pomegranates.

In the fields, though, something unusual was taking place: Hamas fighters were conducting drills, in full view of farmers around them and Israeli drones above. The purpose of the training exercise would become devastatingly clear a few days later, changing the region and the world for ever.

Fifteen months on, all that remains of Beit Hanoun is black smoke rising above white rubble. And yet, amid so much death, pain and destruction, the ceasefire has suddenly made it possible that the twin nightmares that Israel's hostage families and the people of Gaza are living through can finally end.

"I left my heart at home, in the north. I've been whispering to my heart every day, 'I will come back home,"" said teacher Asma Mustafa, from Gaza City, who now lives with her two daughters in Nuseirat refugee camp.

"I lost everything: my car, my house, my job, my money. I don't eat well, I don't sleep well, I don't drink clean water, I can hardly find food... I can't believe I have survived. I feel like I have written a line in the history of Palestine," the 38-year-old said.

Mustafa has counted the days she has been living in a tent: 115 since she and her children fled encroaching Israeli ground troops for the fifth time, ending up in Nuseirat in central Gaza.