Gazans with Maltese citizenship are both hopeful and fatalistic about the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

Hanan Abunada, who was born in Malta to Gazan parents, told Times of Malta that the ceasefire could serve as a chance to process everything that has happened since the start of Israel’s offensive in October 2023, following Hamas’s attack on southern Israel.

“When you get a message every day informing you that someone you know has been killed, you learn to suppress the pain. I think only now will we realise the full extent of what’s happened to us,” she said, adding that the past one and a half years had caused untold mental anguish.

Hanan Abunada

Abunada moved to Gaza aged 14 to study, before working as a lawyer in her family’s hometown of Beit Lahia, located just three kilometres from the border with Israel. She now lives in Malta and works at the Palestinian Embassy.

She said that 200 of her relatives had been killed, with many surviving family members losing their homes.

Her uncle was killed in an airstrike on the same building where she used to live, and her family was unable to recover his body from under the rubble for two months. One of her cousins had to have all four of his limbs amputated and her father, who lived in the West Bank, died of a heart attack last March.

“Aside from the fact that his brother was killed, my father also worked as a journalist, so he found it hard to switch off from the news,” she said.

When fleeing north Gaza, she says her family had to split up to increase the chances of at least some of them surviving.

As part of the ceasefire, those displaced from northern Gaza, where around 90 per cent of infrastructure has been destroyed, will be allowed to return.

“We didn’t think we would be allowed to go back. We thought it would be another 1948, another Nakba,” she said, referring to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians that occurred during and after the 1948 Arab Israeli War. Among the thousands affected were Abunada’s grandparents.

Asked whether she believed the ceasefire would hold, she said she “hoped and wished” that it would.

“We need a permanent ceasefire so we can rebuild our homes and our country. But we do not trust Israel to stop its colonialist project.”

Abunada, who in 2010 worked as the coordinator of a legal aid clinic at the University of Palestine in Gaza as part of the United Nations Development Programme, said she would seek to return and help rebuild if it was safe to do so.

“We do not like being refugees in other countries. We deserve to live safely and peacefully on our land. Not only Hamas members are getting killed but also people who have nothing to do with the war.”

She said that, though material aid in the form of food and medicine was essential, it would only go so far.

“No one in Gaza is healthy. They have all lost something, whether family, friends or their homes and businesses. We are like a newborn baby without support,” she said.

‘I want to see my 90-year-old mother’

Qassam Ali, a Maltese national who was evacuated from Gaza in November 2023, said that, while the ceasefire meant he would hopefully hear less about friends and cousins getting killed, it would not solve things in the long term.

Qassam Ali

“The memory of the war will last for a long time. All we ask is to be treated as human beings, rather than being humiliated and told where we can and cannot go. We need the international community to stop interfering instead of acting like they are doing us a favour by sending aid. Gaza needs to be free,” he said.

Ali said he is also looking to return to Gaza.

“I have to go back. I have no home but Gaza and I have to see my 90-year-old mother,” he said.

The ceasefire agreement was initiated on January 19 after being brokered by the United States, Egypt and Qatar. The agreement outlines a 42-day initial ceasefire period, in which Hamas is to release 33 Israeli hostages, including all women, children, and men over 50. In exchange, Israel will release around 2,000 Palestinian detainees, primarily women and minors.

Negotiations will continue for the release of the remaining 65 Israeli hostages. These discussions are linked to further Israeli military withdrawals and steps toward a permanent ceasefire.