Al-Mawasi, Gaza Strip – In the windswept sands of al-Mawasi, where tents stretch as far as the eye can see, Hanaa Abu Ismail, 42, knelt to clear a patch of ground for her fire and smiled.

For the first time in more than six months, since Israel unilaterally broke the last Gaza ceasefire, the constant hum of war had stopped.

“No more despair,” she said, her voice rising above the hum of the displacement camp. “We want joy, we want to raise our voices – the war is over, and God willing, we’ll go home again.”

The ceasefire, which officially began on Friday, has brought an unfamiliar stillness to Gaza. The drones have been relatively silent, the sky free of warplanes. For Hanaa and the hundreds of thousands crammed into al-Mawasi, a narrow coastal strip between Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis that has become Gaza’s largest displacement camp, there is now a faint and uncertain glimpse of what calm might look like.

The ceasefire was announced in the aftermath of negotiations held earlier this week in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh, attended by mediators from Qatar, Turkiye, and the United States. The agreement, based on a 20-point plan announced by US President Donald Trump in late September, ended 24 months of constant Israeli bombardment that killed more than 67,190 Palestinians and displaced an estimated 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.1 million residents.

Hanaa sat on the packed earth beside her tent, clapping along to an old Palestinian fol