A Ceasefire That Sighs, Not Sleeps
There is a brittle hush over parts of Gaza today — the sort that feels like someone holding their breath after a window has been smashed and the pieces have not yet settled. The truce that many hoped would be the longed-for thaw is doing odd, uncomfortable things: keeping the full blast of war at bay while still allowing shards of violence to cut people who thought themselves out of range.
Local medics reported one man killed by Israeli fire east of the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, and rescuers in Khan Younis said another person was shot and wounded in the western reaches of that battered southern city. Two small, sharp shocks in a day that otherwise might be described as “calm” under a US-brokered ceasefire that only took effect last month.
“You never truly stop listening for the sound of planes,” said Amal, a nurse at Nasser Medical Centre in Khan Younis whose hands were stained with the day’s work. “We are careful, but when the shooting comes it is the same fear every time. People come in and you can see their lives split in half in front of you.”
The Return of a Volunteer
Amid the fragile quiet, the dead were moving. Israel identified the latest body returned from Gaza as that of Lior Rudaeff — a 61-year-old Israeli-Argentinian volunteer ambulance driver who, according to military accounts, was killed on 7 October 2023 while trying to protect his kibbutz, Nir Yitzhak, during the cross-border assault that ignited the Gaza war.
Rudaeff’s remains were taken across the porous and politicised line that divides grief and diplomacy. They arrived after formal identification by Israel’s National Institute of Forensic Medicine, and the army said it had notified the family that the body had been returned for burial.
“We have lived with a picture, a hope, and a small suitcase of things we could not identify as proof,” said Miriam Katz, a family member of one of the hostages, speaking to reporters. “To have him home gives us a shape for our mourning, and yet the emptiness hasn’t lightened.”
How the Exchange Works — The Stark Arithmetic
The deal underlying these movements is brutal in its simplicity: for every live Israeli hostage returned, Israel agreed to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners; for each Israeli body recovered from Gaza, Hamas and Islamic Jihad would hand over the remains of 15 Palestinians held by Israel. Under that arrangement, 15 Palestinian bodies were transferred back to Nasser Medical Centre yesterday — bringing the tally of Palestinian remains returned under the truce to 300.
- Of the 28 deceased hostages Hamas agreed to return, 23 have been handed over so far: 20 Israelis, one Thai, one Nepali and one Tanzanian.
- At the start of the truce Hamas released all 20 surviving hostages it had seized on 7 October 2023.
- Under the return scheme, many Palestinian bodies are being delivered unidentifiable and, in some cases, relegated to mass burials.
“Lior’s return provides some measure of comfort to a family that has lived with agonising uncertainty and doubt for over two years,” an Israeli campaign group for hostages and families said in a statement. “We will not rest until the last hostage is brought home.” The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also pushed Hamas to fulfill its commitments, pledging to “spare no effort” in retrieving the remaining bodies.
Unmarked Graves and Unfinished Business
There is a rawness to how bodies have been handled — not only by the warring sides but by the rubble of cities. The Red Cross, acting as the neutral intermediary, brought the returned Palestinian remains to Khan Younis. Many arrive unidentified; many are placed in shared graves for want of DNA matches or family claims. For families, the ambiguity is torture: a photograph found in a pocket, an article of clothing, a fragment of a name — small talismans in a bureaucratic and forensic terrain.
“We are not just counting numbers,” said Sami al-Masri, a forensic anthropologist who has worked on recovery efforts in Gaza. “Each of those 300 is a life that had a history, a job, a name that mattered. Returning remains is a humanitarian priority, but it is also a profound moral obligation. The scale makes it nearly impossible to give everyone the individual closure they deserve.”
Walk outside a temporary morgue and you hear the same sentences over and over: “Is this my son? Is this my cousin?” The communal wail reaches beyond Gaza to Tel Aviv and back, transforming statistics into family stories.
Flares on the Northern Border
While bodies moved across the Gaza line, explosions answered prayers elsewhere. Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon killed at least three people and wounded many more, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. The Israeli military said one of the strikes had struck arms traffickers from the Lebanese Resistance Brigades, an ally of Hezbollah — a reminder that the region’s frontlines are not simply north-south, nor conducted solely through diplomatic channels.
The strikes in Shebaa, on the slopes of Mount Hermon, killed two brothers whose SUV caught fire, Lebanese state media reported. Later, another hit in the village of Baraashit killed one and wounded four. A separate strike near a hospital in Bint Jbeil wounded seven.
“We urge all parties to preserve the ceasefire and to minimise civilian suffering,” Anouar El Anouni, a spokesman for the European Commission on foreign affairs, said in a statement. “The progress achieved so far is fragile and must be protected.”
“Hezbollah’s arsenals and the smuggling networks that feed them are a real security problem for Israel,” said Dr. Rana Khalidi, a regional security analyst. “But kinetic strikes risk reigniting a broader confrontation — the sort of escalation no one in the region wants right now.”
Where Do We Go From Here?
Look around Gaza and Lebanon and it becomes painfully clear: ceasefires are not peace, and silence is not safety. The transfer of bodies is not an end, but an excruciating punctuation mark in a storyline that has left hundreds of families stranded between accusation and sorrow.
So what are we to make of it all? Does the exchange of remains and prisoners build goodwill, or simply rearrange the moral ledger until the next blow falls? Can international actors — diplomats, aid agencies, forensic teams — stitch together a more durable framework for handling the human detritus of these conflicts?
These are big questions. But behind them are small, immediate ones: Who will identify the next body? Who will tend to the wounded in Khan Younis tonight? Which family will this next exchange finally bring home, and which will remain waiting for a closure that keeps being postponed?
In the narrow streets outside hospitals, under the idle hum of electricity generators, the answers to those questions will unfold in the slow, stubborn language of daily life: lists of names, DNA swabs, burial shrouds, coffee shared with neighbours who are also keeping watch. For now, the ceasefire exhales and inhales — and people carry on, because that is the only honest job left to them.
