As a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas took hold on Sunday, three Israeli hostages left Hamas captivity, and dozens of Palestinian prisoners were set free on day one.
The emotional reunions come 15 months after the Israel-Hamas war began.
A possible path toward peace is now laid out in three-phase ceasefire plan, each stage six weeks long.
Right now, in Phase 1, Hamas will release 33 Israeli hostages, starting with children, women, and the elderly, sick and wounded. Isreal will release 30 Palestinian children and women for every Israeli set free. After months of tight restrictions, Israel is also allowing 600 trucks per day of humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.
“One of the Americans was going to be released in this batch,” Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, American Islamic Forum For Democracy President, said.
Hamas will release all male Israelis in the second phase, and Israel will withdraw soldiers from Gaza, while releasing an agreed number of Palestinian prisoners.
Phase 3 would mean the release of bodies of those who have been killed during the course of this conflict on both sides.
Israel would also end the blockade of the Gaza strip, and Hamas would not rebuild its military power.
For millions, it is a hopeful solution to a war that engulfed the region for nearly 500 days. It started with the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023.
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“Let's first remember how we got here, the war started by Hamas,” Dr. Jasser said. “They killed over 1,200 innocent Israeli Jews. There were over 250 hostages that were taken.”
Jewish students at ASU recently got a firsthand account from one Israeli woman who survived those attacks at the Nova music festival, running and hiding from Hamas for several hours.
“You can't understand what's going on. Everything that's going on through your head, it's that you have to survive. You have to somehow get out of here alive,” Sapir Golan, a witness in the Israel-Is Survived To Tell Project, said. “PTSD is pretty rough.”
Golan says she thought she would die. She hid in a trailer with several other people, which was shot up shortly after she continued running. Golan even had a friend shot dead in front of her.
“Everything you can see is just bodies, and dead bodies, and broken cars and burned cars and burned fields, and so many blood,” Golan said. “There was so many bodies on the road that the car needed to go off road.”
The attack across the globe hits home to the ASU Jewish students that heard Golan speak.
“It definitely took an impact. I personally do have family in Israel as well,” Suzanna Kalishman, a freshman, said.
“We want to support those who have survived such a tragedy,” Barry Shakaob, fifth year student, added.
Local Jewish leaders are also focused on survivors.
"Every day for over 15 months, we have been thinking about the hostages, praying for them, and advocating for their release. They have lived through an unimaginable nightmare,” The Center For Jewish Philanthropy said in part a statement to ABC15. “We are hopeful that over the coming weeks, we will see continued hostage releases until every last one of the remaining 95 hostages are returned home.”
For the Valley’s Palestinian community, a recent poetry reading depicted their pain during Israel’s response to Hamas.
“Under the rubble, her body has remained for days and days,” poet Mosab Abu Toha read aloud from his book, Forest of Noise. “We try to remove the rubble, stone after stone, we only find one small bone from her body.”
The poet says he lost 25 family members in Israeli attacks on Gaza.
“October 7th was a devastating, traumatic moment for Israel,” Daniel Rothenberg, ASU Future Security Initiative Co-Director, said. “Then it led to an extraordinarily brutal response on the part of the Israeli state that led to 47,000 killed.”
Deaths, that touched local Palestinian Community Leader Mohamed El-Sharkawy. He says shortly after October 7, he lost 54 family members in a single strike.
“Whole family gets completely wiped off the earth,” El-Sharkaway said. “Grandparents, the parents, the children, the grandchildren, over 50 of them in one strike. In one day.”
Many of his family members are missing. His nieces in the region are displaced.
“They're being in a tent now,” he said. “They don't know what happened to their homes.”
El-Sharkaway hopes Gaza find strength under the new administration in the U.S.
“We need to rebuild and provide assistance to that region, and we hope that Trump will fulfill his promise,” he said.
Tension in the region is not new, going back eight decades.
Some experts say this ceasefire only brings a fragile promise of peace. Yet in the meantime, it offers relief.
“What's worth celebrating for the moment is the cessation of conflict,” Rothenberg said. “The last 15 months has produced so much extraordinary suffering and the end, even if it's temporary for the moment, but hopefully it will become a permanent ceasefire relatively soon.”
