The Decibel - A dispatch from Gaza as the fragile ceasefire takes hold

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

The ceasefire in Gaza that U.S. President Donald Trump helped broker has been in place since Friday. But already, both Israel and Hamas have accused each other of violating the agreement. Tensions flared over a slower-than-expected return of deceased hostages, and Hamas has, so far, refused to disarm and cede power in Gaza. Despite the disagreements, humanitarian aid trucks began entering Gaza on Wednesday, and Israel is set to open Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt this week. But as cracks in this deal emerge, where does this ceasefire go from here?Today, Globe freelance journalist Hasan Jaber joins us from Gaza. He’ll describe the mood in the region, as thousands of Palestinians return and Hamas fighters remerge. Then, the Globe’s senior international correspondent, Mark MacKinnon, will discuss the state of this deal, and whether this ceasefire can hold.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The ceasefire in Gaza went into effect on October 10th, and the deal's first phase has seen many people returning. Thousands of displaced Gazans have been heading back to their homes, or what's left to them, as Israeli troops begin to withdraw. On Monday, the 20 surviving Israeli hostages were freed by Hamas. For 738 days, our lives were trapped between hope and fear. Yesterday, that chapter ended. And, Jamani, Habibtak!

Khabi! Chalak! And Palestinians celebrated the release of nearly 2,000 detainees from Israeli prisons. The exchange of Israeli hostages and Palestinian detainees is a crucial part of U.S. President Donald Trump's 20-point cease-firm. deal. But only days into the ceasefire fire, Hamas fighters have started reappearing and asserting power in limited areas of Gaza.

Tensions have flared over both Hamas' refusal to disarm and seed power, and the slower-than-expected return of deceased hostages. Cracks in this U.S. broker deal are emerging, and already both sides have accused the other of violating the agreement. Today, we're going to get a view from the ground in Gaza. Longtime Globe freelance journalist, Hassan Jabber, joins us from the Gaza Strip, and you'll tell us what it's been like there since the ceasefire took effect.

Then we'll speak to the Globe's senior international correspondent Mark McKinnon about the state of this deal and whether it can actually hold. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hello? Hello, Hassan. Hello, yes. Thank you so much for making the time for us today. So, Hassan, you're in Gaza, and it's been several days since the ceasefire started.

What was it like when people across Gaza got the news? Give me a sense of that. They were happy and they believe that their life will return to its norm. They are dreaming that this is where we stand and no restart of the war. People now is trying to retain back to their normal life. But it is difficult, as you know, after that. destruction everywhere, the houses, the hospitals, the streets, everything. So the streets are being cleared of rubble, but there's still a lot to do to rebuild.

Over the past few days, we've heard reports of Hamas re-emerging in the streets in Gaza. What can you tell me about that? Directly after the declaration of the ceasefire, Hamas groups, they began to organize. the markets and the streets, stooping the cars, trying to organize the life of the people. And also to guard the aids coming from outside. They are trying their best people, welcome that, and they are supporting them. So Hamas is organizing the markets in the streets? They are organizing the markets in the streets and also they are organizing the daily life

and they are guarding hospitals, they are guarded money, herty clinics that are still working in Gaza. Are they armed? Some of them, yes. They are armed after Trump says that we will allow them to. keep the law in the streets, they began appearing with armed. How are people feeling about Hamas being on the streets right now? People in Gaza are feeling different. There is two groups.

It will come, Hamas, return to their life. And they don't want to open any file or any things against them and those who is strictly against Hamas who don't want Hamas routine back but the great majority is with Hamas now but this will not reflect itself in any elections because people who voted for Habas in the last elections expressed their will not to vote again for Hamas. Hamas lost a lot of extremers during the war.

When it comes to the ceasefire deal, one of the points put out by Donald Trump's ceasefire plan was that Hamas would disarm and would give over control of Gaza. And the fact that Hamas is in the streets is an interesting point. So I just, I wonder, is there a sense that that perhaps might hamper this deal from going through? It will not succeed. Disarming Hamas will not succeed at all. First of all, because Hamas refused till now to disarm,

to handle their weapons to any foreign people or foreign police or foreign or Arabic countries. And they call that this will be. Palestinian decision, not to, from outside. We've heard a lot about this ceasefire deal being different than those before them. Does it feel different in Gaza? I hope that this is where will last forever because Netanyahu till now didn't get rid from those radical members in his government. who push him all the time to restart the war.

I hope that Donald Trump will succeed in studying and to reach a last thing, this fire, and to end the war, and it will be a great hobby for the people. Hassan, the last time we had you on the show, you talked about the scarcity of food. Has anything changed? I know that aid trucks are reportedly beginning to come into Gaza, but what have you seen on the ground? How has that been?

Yes, there is a daily aid truck comes and enter to Gaza, and it appeared in the markets. and the prices also began to be lower than in the past. Now, people can buy and can eat more than in the bust. In the past, the prices was very high. Right now, there is a lot of people who can buy these goods, but in fact, there is some items that didn't appear in the market. like meat, chicken, eggs. Since seven months, me and my family and the majority of Gaza

didn't eat chicken or meat or eggs. And people here are dreaming of these items to be in their meal. Many people have lost family members and friends in this war. Is there a sense that this ceasefire may give people across Gaza the chance to begin to grieve? It is a chance for the people here in Gaza to stand with each other about the loss. But the loss entered maybe 99 of the houses here in Gaza. everywhere you will see martyrs, there are killed people, injured, widows.

It is a big problem which will not be able to solve within tens of years. So now that the ceasefire deal is in place, is there anything that you're watching for in the coming days and weeks? I'm waiting that the crossing will be open for the people. The Rafa crossing. Yes, to go for medical care. We need a lot of medicine. We need a lot of items that will treat people here in Gaza. We need a lot of things here.

People hope that all the world, especially, Trump and the great countries will assist them to rebuild Gaza. They know that it takes a lot of time, but they hope. Hassan, thank you so much for making the time to speak with me today. Thank you. That was Hassan Jabber, a freelance journalist for the Globe based in Gaza. After the break, the Globe's senior international correspondent, Mark McKin joins us to talk about the state of the ceasefire deal.

Hi, Mark. Thanks for joining us. Hi, thanks for having me. So we just heard from the Globe's freelance writer Hassan Jabber about what's happening on the ground in Gaza. He mentioned Hamas has begun to reemerge on the streets. And one of the key points of the ceasefire agreement is Hamas disarming and giving up control over the strip. So if we're seeing Hamas in the streets,

what does this mean for the deal? Well, I think it's important to say that Hamas never agreed to that part of the deal. It only agreed to phase one, which is what we're seeing, this exchange of the hostages and the bodies of hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and the bodies of dead Gazans. There has never been an indication that Hamas had signed on to the rest of this deal, which includes the disarmament of Hamas, which, you know, it said it'll disarm if and when there's a Palestinian government, which, you know, this deal does not give us a clear pathway to. So I think what we're seeing here is like we've had two ceasefires before that I've seen hostages exchanged for prisoners and breaks in the fighting. We're seeing already the big problems and sort of why it was probably very premature for Donald Trump to call this peace in the Middle East when what he might have negotiated here is a limited time ceasefire. Yeah, Trump basically did declare peace in the region when he was at the Knesset recently. But like you said, there's only been partial acceptance of Trump's 20-point plan.

So how would you describe where we are right now with this deal with, with peace? Like, what would you say? Well, I mean, there is a hopeful moment here. This is progress, of course. There's been joyous scenes on both sides as hostages have been released on the Israeli side as Palestinian prisoners have gone home. And there is a moment here where Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, the Houthis are all quite bad. badly weakened by war, where Israel's tired of war. Israelis want an end of this as well.

So there is a moment here where careful, hard work could bring about something like lasting peace, but we have not seen any attention to detail so far from Mr. Trump. And intriguingly, Prime Minister Mark Carney's people have been saying that, you know, before Trump arrived at the summit in Charmel Sheikh where he sort of summoned 20 world leaders to come to this Egyptian resort and stand in front of a banner that said peace in the Middle East, in English, not in Hebrew or in Arabic, just in English, that Mr. Carney's people have been putting out, there were serious conversations happening with these 20 people in the room, and people are interested in helping rebuild Gaza. But to get to that point, you need to deliver security

in Gaza, and that's where you get back to this first stumbling hurdle, which is where if Hamas is still in the streets, if we've seen terrible videos today of Hamas executing prisoners in the streets, people they believe to be collaborators. If Israel's still controlling 53% of Gaza, you know, we can't even really talk about rebuilding when we're still in this sort of flux. Okay, so you mentioned Israel still controlling 53% of Gaza. What is the presence like of Israel and Gaza? What's changed since the Sveartuk effect?

So they've pulled back to what's called the Yellow Line. And Israeli troops have withdrawn from, you know, the major urban areas of Gaza to just outside of them. Clashes are continuing, I think, the last. The last account I saw from the Palestinian Ministry of Health had 10 to 12 people have been killed since the start of the ceasefire. That's not really a ceasefire under most definitions when you've got people being killed at that pace. Of course, that's much better than we've seen over the past years. Much fewer people being killed in an average day than over the past few years. But it tells you this is still a very volatile situation.

And far-right members of Prime Minister Netanyahu's government in Israel were saying, actually, we're not relieving Gaza, we're going to settle Gaza. So this is the only way to make ourselves secure is to take control of Gaza as Israel had until 2005 when it withdrew its settlers and soldiers. So, you know, this idea that peace is here seems very, very far-fetched still. Do we know anything about how this transition of power is meant to look? Like, what does a deal lay out when it comes to Hamas being replaced? When and how was that supposed to happen? So if Hamas is, and Hamas said it doesn't want to be part of the governance of Gaza.

It has said they are willing to accept a Palestinian-led government, which is, again, at odds with what Mr. Trump has laid out. He's talking about an international board of peace. You know, very tellingly, one of the first people he appointed was the former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who is wildly unpopular in the Middle East for his role in the Iraq War. And then there was a really telling moment I thought in this peace summit or before this peace summit in Charmel Sheikh, where someone's asked if Egyptian President Sisi might be a good person for this board of peace. And Mr. Trump said, oh, well, that's a good idea. We'd have to have a translator, though.

So until this point, the Board of Peace was all going to be in English. I mean, this is a Palestinian territory that I guess Mr. Trump thought could be administered completely by foreigners. That's called colonialism. It's been tried. That's kind of how we got to this point. So, you know, there's a lot of optimism. There is a good moment here to make peace. But it has to be done in a serious way.

And that's just my analysis sounded I lived in the Middle East for years. And it's been covering it for two decades. I feel that all we're doing here is building 20. towards a great disappointment, but I hope I'm proven wrong. You said that some of these things are concerning to you in the deal. As a person who lived in the middle of us for a long time, can you tell me more about why you're concerned? I mean, I'm just concerned that, you know, if you tell people that peace has been achieved,

that the war is over, I mean, the expectations are going to rise, and people on both sides are going to start to think like, okay, and especially when the deal is so vague and can be interpreted in so many different ways, and it hasn't been signed. Hamas, and, you know, Mr. Netanyahu wasn't at this peace summit in Charmel Sheik. So nobody can say really as vague as this document that was signed in Charmelshek was. It wasn't signed by any of the belligerents. So, you know, to call this peace in the Middle East, I just think it's going to undermine the idea of what peace in the Middle East really is, which is two people, two states living side by side on borders there, but he recognizes.

And, you know, everyone sort of, you know, behaving like Denmark and Sweden, right? That seems a very long way off. And I just don't think it's helpful to be running big banners and saying we've fixed it when we're nowhere close. Yeah. You mentioned something earlier about the details and there's no details here. Why do the details matter? Yeah. I mean, making peace in the Middle East has been trying, there's been peace processes going back decades, of course, the most famous one being the Oslo Accords in the 1990s and subsequent efforts that were led by presidents, Clinton and Bush and Obama.

And what it really breaks down to, there's a whole bunch of crucial questions. So if you're going to go for the two-state solution, which is what most countries, including Canada now, recognize as the only way to truly end this conflict, what are the borders of this Palestinian state? And let's remember that it's Donald Trump who moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem in his first term in office and recognized Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights. So not exactly a guy who's tied to things like international borders, international law. And okay, so let's say we resolve the borders.

what are the rights of the Palestinian refugees, generations of them now who've been living around the Middle East since the 1948 and 1967 wars that sort of established Israel on its borders. And then if you resolve those issues, then you get down to the really, really difficult point, which is the Holy City of Jerusalem, which is holy to three different religions in which both Israel and the Palestinians claim as their capital. The division of Jerusalem is where every previous serious peace effort has founded, and nothing in this 20-point plan that Mr. Trump has rolled out. gets anywhere close to dealing with these issues. It's just stop the fighting, which he's achieved,

disarm Hamas, which is the next step, and then these very fanciful ideas about a sort of international board of governance for gas, which at least is better than previous ideas like the Riviera of the Middle East and things like that. So I guess it's progress. It's in the right direction. And there are serious people who are trying to jump onto this progress and take it in a good direction, but a lot will depend on, you know, the whims of Mr. Trump. Yeah. So over 20, countries were represented at Monday's Peace Summit in Egypt that you've referenced, where Trump kind of by himself signed this peace deal. What do we know about the international effort to support this deal and to rebuild Gaza? I think it's instructive how many, you know, both positive

and in a slightly worrying way that you saw all these leaders come to Sharma Lashik in such short notice. Because in a positive way, they want to support what's happening. Everybody wanted to see the end of the fighting in Gaza. There is an international desire to rebuild Gaza. On the other side, it also kind of shows that people are afraid to, if they turn down an invitation, I think there's a worry you'll have a trade war in the morning with Donald Trump. That's sort of how this is all going. You know, this deal, the shape of it, you know, I talked to Gershon Baskin, who was one of the Israeli negotiators for decades. And he said, this deal was effectively on the table since last September. What's changed is Donald Trump pushing Benjamin Netanyahu to do it right now. And so that, I think, international leaders in general are sort of afraid that Trump's, is going to pay too much attention to them and turn his pressure tactics onto them. That said, this is a massive task rebuilding Gaza. Let's say Hamas agrees to disarm tomorrow. Let's say this international force, which is, again, vaguely defined,

international and Arab force will take responsibility for security in Gaza. It's still a $70 billion task, according to the latest estimates, just to rebuild Gaza. Basically, that number tells you everything was destroyed. And more than 90% of all buildings have been damaged or destroyed. schools, hospitals, infrastructure, everything is gone. And there is an international desire to do that. I think that one of the things you will see soon is a major international donor conference

hosted somewhere, perhaps in Europe, perhaps in the Persian Gulf, where people try and get the money together. But you can't rebuild if there's still the Israeli army there. You can't rebuild if Hamas controlling the streets. And so the belligerents, who again are not the ones who signed this deal, are the ones standing the way of that process. This past week, Trump called for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be pardoned. He's been on trial for corruption since 2020.

With that in mind, does this deal say anything about accountability for the last two years? Yeah, there was a remarkable moment earlier Wednesday. Benjamin Netanyahu had to have a court appearance in relation to these, you know, accusations of corruption and abuse of power. And he suddenly developed after all these meetings, perhaps legitimately, he suddenly developed bronchitis and couldn't carry on. So you'd have a shorter day than usual. You know, I think Mr. Trump, who's hosted both Benjamin Netanya, who has been accused of war crimes by the international criminal court and Vladimir Putin, who's also been accused of war crimes by the international

criminal court this year on U.S. soil, doesn't pay a lot of attention to things like international law. But, you know, anybody who has studied how conflicts really get resolved, you know, thinking back to the Balkans, to Rwanda, to South Africa, you need, in addition to stopping the fighting and rebuilding, you need to have something like truth and justice so people can move on. And there's nothing at all in any of these discussions. Again, same with Mr. Trump's approach to peace in Ukraine, nothing that talks about what would be done with these allegations of war crimes. How would we get to the truth of what happened here? That just doesn't seem to interest him very much.

So right now Trump is very involved in this deal, but, you know, hostages of all but returned, leverage to bring either side to the table is basically gone. Is there any concern that if U.S. pressure goes away that this deal could fall apart? Yeah, I think that's the biggest concern here amongst people I've been talking to this week is that Mr. Trump turned his attention to Gaza the last few days, last few weeks, and was able to push Benjamin Netanyahu to stop the fighting. to push Hamas to accept at least the first phase of this deal. And that is, you know, for everything I've just said, that's an important accomplishment.

And of course, the moments of seeing these people, these Israeli hostages, Palestinian prisoners going home and now we're at the phase. We're exchanging dead bodies, obviously a lot more grim, but an important progress as well for the families of those people. That was all done because Trump's focus is here and now on Gaza. How long will that last? When we saw Hamas appeared in the streets on Monday, Trump appeared to say on a flight home. This is part of the plan that, you know, it's okay for Hamas to sort of reestablish

security in the short term. Today, he said if Hamas doesn't disarm, we might do it for them. And I said, you're going to disarm, right? Yes, sir, we're going to disarm. That's what they told me. They will disarm or we will disarm them. Got it? Again, Trump's very, very invested, and he's going to try and push Hamas to disarm. I don't know if more violence is going to cause Hamas to do anything. Violence has not pushed them to where they are now. So I wonder whether in two weeks time or two months time, we're still going to have Mr. Trump's attention, especially with everything that's going on domestically in the United States, especially with the other big international files, trade wars with China, the war in Ukraine,

etc. If he's going to have the patience that is required to see this through. So it's still a very fragile situation. Mark, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you, Sher. That was Mark McKinnon, the Globe's senior international correspondent. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Our producers are Madeline White, Michal Stein, and Allie Graham. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor.

Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you soon.