Salma Altaweel's daughter, Julia, refuses to believe a ceasefire can hold in Gaza.
The seven-year-old woke up on Thursday to news of an initial agreement to end the war. But the young girl, who has been displaced more than 10 times and sleeps in an overcrowded tent in the south, cannot help but expect the worst.
“I woke her to tell her the war was over, and she said she didn't believe me,” Ms Altaweel, who works with the Norwegian Refugee Council in Gaza, told The National. “She no longer trusts that the war can truly end because of the many times previous ceasefires have failed.”
Many Palestinians have reacted to the news with distrust and disbelief – an indication of Gaza's dire mental health crisis. Residents of the enclave live in a state of continuous traumatic stress, a vicious loop in which “trauma has become their reality”, according to mental health experts.
Unlike post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which involves flashbacks, continuous traumatic stress manifests as chronic hyperarousal, emotional exhaustion and a collapse of future orientation, according to Dr Wael Al Momani, a psychiatrist from Jordan. “People are not just reacting to past traumatic events – they are bracing for the next,” he told The National.
For more than two years, residents have desperately waited for respite from death, destruction and displacement, only for their hopes to come crashing down with every wave of renewed and intensified Israeli violence.
Rasha Farhat, 49, recalls sleeping properly for the first time since the war began after Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire deal in January. The journalist had left the Gaza Strip for Egypt with her children before the truce came into effect, but her husband stayed behind.
“It felt like the end of the war, we were crying tears of joy, but our happiness was short-lived,” she told The National. The ceasefire collapsed on March 18, when Israel launched overnight air strikes across Gaza, killing more than 400 people. “It shocked us, we didn't expect war to resume this violently,” Ms Farhat said. “And since then, it's been getting worse.”
A report by UN experts last month found that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. The scale of devastation inflicted by the Israeli military has led Ms Farhat to lose all hope in new ceasefire talks.
In August, Hamas agreed to an Egyptian-Qatari proposal for a 60-day Gaza truce. Officials involved in the talks told The National at the time that a “positive announcement” could come soon. But the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sidestepped the proposal and launched a massive ground offensive in Gaza city, defying international condemnation.
This cycle of ceasefire negotiations and their collapse has taken a profound toll on the people of Gaza, Dr Al Momani said. “Each glimmer of hope followed by renewed violence reinforces a sense of betrayal and helplessness. For many, the anticipation of peace becomes a source of anxiety rather than relief.”
Patients he saw in Gaza presented with hypervigilance, sleep disturbances and emotional numbing – all “symptoms that reflect a population living in a prolonged state of anticipatory grief and existential dread”.
Footage circulating on social media shows jubilant celebrations in Gaza following US President Donald Trump's announcement on Wednesday that Hamas and Israel had agreed on the first phase of the ceasefire plan, which involves the release of all hostages remaining in Gaza and the retreat of Israeli troops to an agreed-upon line.
But many Gazans are in a “default survival mode”, unable to process or grasp the possibility of an end to the violence, say experts.
Dr Joseph El Khoury, a consultant psychiatrist in Dubai, describes it as an “emotional protective shield” in which Palestinians “don't even want to think that things will improve, because they just want to survive”.
“I don't have hope,” Ms Farhat told The National. “I can't afford to have hope, but I really wish I'm wrong this time, and something happens to stop this genocide.”
