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On October 10, a ceasefire in Gaza was officially announced. International news media were quick to focus on what they now call “the peace plan”. United States President Donald Trump, they announced, will go to Cairo to oversee the agreement and then to Israel to speak at the Knesset. The air strikes over Gaza, they reported, have stopped.

The bombs have indeed stopped, but our suffering continues. Our reality has not changed. We are still under siege. Israel still has full control over our air, land and sea; it is still blocking sick and injured Palestinians from leaving and journalists, war crimes investigators and activists from going in. It is still controlling what food, what medicine, and essential supplies enter.

The siege has lasted over 18 years, shaping every moment of our lives. I have lived under this blockade since I was just three years old. What kind of peace is this, if it will continue to deny us the freedoms that everyone else has?

The news of the ceasefire deal and “the peace plan” overshadowed another, much more important development. Israel raided another flotilla in international waters loaded with humanitarian aid for Gaza, kidnapping 145 people on board – a crime under international law. This came just days after Israel attacked the Global Sumud Flotilla, detaining more than 450 people who were trying to reach Gaza.

These flotillas carried more than just humanitarian aid. They carried the hope of freedom for the Palestinian people. They carried a vision of true peace – one where Palestinians are no longer besieged, occupied and dispossessed.

Many have criticised the freedom flotillas, arguing that they cannot make a difference since they are doomed to be intercepted. I myself did not pay much attention to the movement. I was deeply disappointed, having lost hope in seeing an end to this war.

But that changed when Brazilian journalist Giovanna Vial interviewed me. Giovanna wrote an article about my story before setting sail with the Sumud Flotilla. She then made a post on social media saying: “for Sara, we sail”. Her words and her courage stirred something in me.

Afterwards, I kept my eyes on the flotilla news, following every update with hope. I told my relatives about it, shared it with my friends, and reminded anyone who would listen how extraordinary this movement was. I kept wondering — how is it possible that, in a world so heavy with injustice, there are still people willing to abandon everything and put their lives in danger for people they had never met, for a place, most of them had never visited.

I stayed in touch with Giovanna. “Until my last breath, I will never leave you alone,” she wrote to me while sailing towards Gaza. In the midst of so much darkness, she became the light.

This was the first time in two years I felt like we were heard. We were seen.

The Sumud Flotilla was by far the biggest in the movement’s history, but it was not about how many boats there were or how many people were on board or how much humanitarian aid they carried. It was about putting a spotlight on Gaza — about making sure the world could no longer look away.

“All Eyes on Gaza,” read one post on the official Instagram account of the flotilla. It stayed with me, I read it on a very heavy night when the deafening sound of bombs in Gaza City was relentless. It was just before I had to flee my home due to the brutal Israeli onslaught.

Israel stopped the flotillas. They abused and deported the participants. They seized the aid. They may have prevented them from reaching our shores, but they failed to erase the message they carried. A message of peace. A message of freedom. A message we had been waiting to hear for two long, brutal years. The boats were captured, but the solidarity reached us.

I carry so much gratitude in my heart for every single human being who took part in the freedom flotillas. I wish I could reach each of them personally — to tell them how much their courage, their presence, and their solidarity meant to me, and to all of us in Gaza. We will never forget them. We will carry their names, their faces, their voices in our hearts forever.

To those who sailed toward us: thank you. You reminded us that we are not alone.

And to the world: we are clinging to hope. We are still waiting – still needing – more flotillas to come. Come to us. Help us break free from this prison.

The bombing has stopped now, and I can only hope that this time it does not resume in a few weeks. But we still do not have peace.

Governments have failed us. But the people have not.

One day, I know, the freedom flotilla boats will reach the shore of Gaza and we will be free.

Huge explosions were seen as Israeli air attacks hit a town in south Lebanon, killing at least one person and injuring at least seven. The strikes targeted a site that sold excavators and other heavy machinery.

A drone and artillery attack has killed at least 60 people at a displacement centre and university grounds where people had been seeking refuge, in the besieged Sudanese city of el-Fasher in North Darfur state, according to activists.

The El Fasher Resistance Committee said on Saturday that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has been at war with the Sudanese army, had carried out a “massacre” on the Dar al-Arqam displacement centre.

“Children, women and the elderly were killed in cold blood, and many were completely burned,” said the committee, as it called for an international intervention. “The situation has gone beyond disaster and genocide inside the city, and the world remains silent.”

The attack represents the latest in an intensifying pattern of strikes on civilian areas in the city, with the brutal civil war now well into its third year. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights documented at least 53 civilians killed between October 5-8 alone in attacks across el-Fasher locality, with women and children among the dead.

El-Fasher is the last major city held by the government-aligned Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in the vast western Darfur region, and has faced intensified attacks from the paramilitary RSF since the army recaptured the capital, Khartoum, in March this year.

The RSF has been fighting SAF for control of the country since April 2023, when two generals leading both forces fell out. The war has triggered what humanitarian organisations have said is the world’s largest humanitarian emergency.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed, and millions have been externally and internally displaced due to the fighting.

Approximately 260,000 people remain trapped inside, but el-Fasher’s overall population has now shrunk by 62 percent from its pre-war level of 1.11 million to just 413,454 people, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

An individual in the city, who requested anonymity, told Al Jazeera that people had spent much of the day “living underground in shelters” built around their homes to avoid heavy shelling. “The situation is extremely bad,” he said.

“Generally, the RSF have relied on air strikes to force civilians out of the city so they can take it over,” said Mohamed Badawi, a human rights activist with the Uganda-based African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies, which monitors the conflict in Sudan.

Under the months-long blockade, el-Fasher faces catastrophic humanitarian conditions.

A UN Development Programme report published this week said: “El Fasher faces collapsed markets, a complete collapse of food availability and affordability, and no road access for aid, forcing residents to survive on animal feed and food waste”.

Satellite imagery analysed by the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab reveals a systematic campaign of destruction surrounding el-Fasher. Researchers documented widespread burning of villages and displacement camps in a 57-kilometre radius around the city, with evidence of ethnic targeting primarily affecting non-Arab communities.

Yale researchers identified a 57-kilometre earthen berm encircling el-Fasher that restricts civilian movement and humanitarian access.

Last week, El Fasher’s only functioning hospital, the Saudi Maternity Hospital, came under attack three times, killing six people, including a child.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO chief, called for the “immediate protection of health facilities”, whilst Hadja Lahbib, the EU crisis management commissioner, said the attacks were “mindless”.

Repeated attacks this month on Saudi Maternity Hospital, the only functional hospital in El Fasher, have led to 6 deaths and 12 injuries.

Such reprehensible attacks on health must stop.
Health care must always be protected in line with International Humanitarian Law.#Sudan pic.twitter.com/0F4Kg308ML

The International Committee of the Red Cross said health facilities across Sudan are routinely attacked and looted, with ambulances blocked at checkpoints or destroyed. In Khartoum, 70-80 percent of health facilities have closed or barely remain operational, according to the World Health Organization.