Khan Younis, Gaza Strip – For the first time in a long time, Palestinian mother Wiam al-Masri can clearly recognise the cries of her infant son, Samih, who is not yet two months old. His soft wailing rises in the quiet air of al-Mawasi, in southern Khan Younis, hours after Israel and Hamas agreed to the first phase of the peace plan brokered by US President Donald Trump to end the Gaza war – largely halting Israeli air and artillery strikes and ushering in an unfamiliar calm.
After two years of war that left more than 67,190 people dead – an assault the United Nations described as genocide – Palestinians in Gaza are beginning to celebrate a long-awaited silence. The agreement has dramatically reduced the constant shelling and the buzzing of warplanes that have dominated the skies since 2023 – although Israel has conducted some attacks, killing at least 29 Palestinians on Thursday, particularly in Gaza City.
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Inside a worn tent where she has lived for five months with her firstborn, her husband and his parents, Wiam listens as the sea wind brushes through the fabric. She says softly, “Finally, the sound of the sea is no longer drowned out by the noise of war. This calm is a blessing only those who have listened to death’s roar for two years can truly understand.”
Wiam’s family fled to al-Mawasi after Israeli forces destroyed her husband’s apartment in Gaza City, just six months after their marriage in November 2024.
At 24, Wiam had been studying pharmacy at the University of Palestine before the war destroyed her campus and forced her to drop out.
Now, she presses her ear, signalling the stillness around her – no explosions, no roaring aircraft. From just 400m (1,300 feet) away, she can hear the gentle breaking of waves on Gaza’s coast, once drowned out by the sound of bombardment.
The buzz of the ‘zanana’
“Since his birth, I never left my baby’s side,” Wiam recalls. “I could barely hear him cry over the shelling or the drones. The most terrifying were the quadcopters that flew right between and inside the tents – once, one hovered just above us.”
A quadcopter is a small, camera-equipped drone that Israel uses extensively for surveillance across Gaza and the occupied West Bank. It emits a distinctive, continuous buzz that Palestinians call “al-zanana” – Arabic for “the buzzing drone.”
She smiles faintly. “Now I hear birds chirping in the palm trees, the sea, and my baby’s cry – sounds I was deprived of before.”
As a breastfeeding mother, Wiam says, “My son’s cry gives me comfort. The real terror was when the [Israeli] tanks approached al-Mawasi – at least three times – or when a drone hovered so close we thought it would strike.”
Wiam pauses, then adds: “And al-zanana was the worst. You can’t hear anything else. It’s not just surveillance; it’s psychological warfare meant to break us.”
She dreams of returning to the rubble of her home. “The sounds of war were not just noise. They were constant fear – every roar could become death in a second. Today, only hours into the truce, the difference is enormous. We can finally hear each other again.”
During the war, she often played recordings of the Quran to calm her baby and herself. “Every sound around us meant death,” she says quietly. “We could barely stand from fear. Imagine living surrounded by the constant noise of destruction – you feel death breathing beside you.”
Memories of loss
The harshest sound Wiam remembers came 36 days into the war, when Israeli strikes hit her extended family’s home as she stood just metres away visiting her aunt. The blast killed six of her siblings, her father’s wife, and her niece, and injured several others, including her twin sister, Wisam.
“It was a sound I’ll never forget,” Wiam says. “A massacre in every sense. Thank God the war has stopped – even temporarily – so that these explosions and massacres won’t happen again.”
Not far away in al-Mawasi, Ahmed al-Hissi, 73, can barely believe the silence. “We’ve lived with the sounds of death chasing us day and night,” he jokes to his sons and grandchildren. “It will take time to get used to peace.”
He is a father of eight – the eldest, Mahmoud, is 50, and the youngest, Shaaban, 28. His son Khaled, 34, was killed on November 8, 2023, by an Israeli naval shell near Gaza’s fishing port. Khaled’s wife, Thuraya, 30, was killed days later when a neighbouring apartment was bombed.
Now Ahmed sits inside a borrowed tent, surrounded by some of his children and grandchildren – including Ahmed, 13; Ghazza, 11; and Shawq, 3 – the children of his late son. They survived because they were playing on the first floor when the third floor, where their mother stood, was hit.
“The sounds of war are unbearable,” he says. “Sometimes we jumped out of bed from the blasts, hugging the children as they shook uncontrollably. Those sounds were omens of death. That’s why today feels unreal.”
As he repairs a fishing net stretched between his knees, he adds, “Even now, my grandchildren flinch at the slightest sound – if I clap my hands, they cry. Here, every sound means something. It means survival or death.”
He looks toward the sea. “Tomorrow, I’ll return to fishing. We’ll hear the gulls and the vendors at Beach Camp again, not the cries of mourners or the rumble of tanks. Gaza is moving from the sounds of death to the sounds of life.”
Empty pots and quiet hunger
In northern al-Mawasi, Tawfiq al-Najili, 40, volunteers as a supervisor at a camp for displaced families. He scrapes the last grains of rice from a large pot donated by a local charity into a plastic bowl for a hungry child clinging to his leg. Exhaustion and sadness shadow his face.
He says the sound of an empty pot scraping its bottom is, to him, “as painful as an explosion”.
“When the ladle hits the bottom of the pot, I know there are families who won’t eat tonight,” he explains. “The war forced many sounds on us – the terrifying ones like jets and bombs, but also the heartbreaking ones: empty pots, children crying from hunger.”
Each time he hears that sound, sorrow fills his chest. “You see adults and children turn away in despair, some in tears. I pray never to hear that sound – or the sound of children crying – again.”
Displaced from northern Khan Younis five months ago, Tawfiq hopes the truce brings not only quiet skies but also food, water, and medicine.
“The war will have truly stopped,” he says, “when the cries of the hungry and the sick fall silent – when we no longer hear weeping or drones, only peace.”
