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5 min readFour Seasons of Ceasefire in Gaza
October 10, 2025. The war in Gaza was supposed to be over. A US-backed ceasefire had gone into effect, outlining three phases: Israel would withdraw to half of Gaza, then to 40 percent, while Palestinians would control the rest; Hamas would release the remaining 48 Israeli hostages captured in the October 7th attacks; Israel would release thousands of Palestinian prisoners; and in the final phase, Hamas would disarm. President Trump called it "the first step toward a strong, durable and everlasting peace."
But when NPR's Anas Baba—one of the last remaining journalists in Gaza working full-time with an American news organization—went out onto the streets on the day of the announcement, expecting celebrations, he found something else entirely. "People were not," he says. In the nearly year since that ceasefire was announced, according to Gaza's health ministry, more than 1,400 people have been killed in Israeli attacks, 300 of them children. A dozen journalists have been killed. The remaining 2.1 million Palestinians have been crowded into just 30 percent of Gaza. And those numbers rise nearly every day. "Until the moment, most of the families in Gaza, they don't talk about their lost because they are still losing more and more," Baba says. "So it's not past tense, it's still present."
Fall to Winter: The Ceasefire That Wasn't
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:49) **The Soundtrack of Survival** - Anas Baba describes the music that plays in his head during the war, from Tupac and Mozart to a song from *Les Misérables*, "Look Down," which he says has become the anthem of his reality in Gaza.
- 2 (03:03) **The Ceasefire Reality, By the Numbers** - The episode sets the stage for the ceasefire, outlining its three phases and then immediately juxtaposing that plan with the grim statistics of the year that followed.
- 3 (07:07) **Part 1: Fall to Winter** - The episode moves through the first season of the ceasefire, starting with the day of the announcement itself, which Anas describes as strangely devoid of celebration.
- 4 (13:48) **The Cost of a Cup of Tea** - A detailed look at the daily struggle for basic necessities in Gaza, where even making a simple cup of tea has become a major, multi-step ordeal.
- 5 (16:36) **The Ban on Aid and the Alternate Universe** - Israel bans major international aid groups, including Doctors Without Borders, from operating in Gaza, just as the US announces the start of Phase 2 of the ceasefire.
- 6 (21:16) **Part 2: Spring** - The world's attention shifts as the US and Israel launch a new war against Iran, freezing negotiations on the crucial next steps of the Gaza ceasefire.
- 7 (25:58) **Excavating the Dead** - Anas spends three days with a recovery crew, documenting the impossible task of finding and retrieving skeletons from a collapsed building with limited time and resources.
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Show Notes
Guests:
Anas Baba, NPR Gaza reporter
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