SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
It has been a month since the ceasefire in Gaza went into effect. President Trump claimed the deal he put forward ended the war, but Gaza's health ministry says in the ceasefire, 245 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire, and the Israeli military says three soldiers were killed by militants. Despite the violence, both sides say they are committed to the ceasefire. To give us the latest, we are joined by NPR international correspondent Aya Batrawy in Dubai. Hey there.
AYA BATRAWY, BYLINE: Hi, Scott.
DETROW: So let's just get an update here. Hamas has released all the living Israeli hostages it was holding. Why hasn't the ceasefire moved on to the next phase?
BATRAWY: Yeah, the living hostages were released in an exchange for a number of detained Palestinians right away in the first 72 hours. But Israel is insisting on the return of the remains of all the deceased hostages in Gaza as well. Hamas has returned the remains of 24 of those hostages, but four bodies have yet to be returned, and we just don't know whether Hamas can reach them under the rubble or even knows where they are. And as part of the deal, Israel has also returned 315 bodies of Palestinians it was holding to Gaza. But less than a third of those, Scott, have actually been identified due to a lack of DNA testing in Gaza after the war.
DETROW: I mean, I read the stats that I began this report with, and I wonder, is it fair to call this a truce if people are still being killed?
BATRAWY: The number of Palestinians killed this past month in the ceasefire are actually a fraction of the more than 69,000 deaths recorded by Gaza's health ministry during the war. So some of those people were killed trying to check on their homes in Gaza in areas they thought weren't under Israeli control, but others, many of them civilians, were killed in Israeli airstrikes that Israel says was in retaliation against Hamas for attacks on its soldiers in southern Gaza.
DETROW: A month in, what is the mood like in Gaza?
BATRAWY: People we've talked to say this feels like a pause to them rather than a recovery, and that's in large part because Israel continues to impede aid getting into Gaza. Although Israel's military tells us hundreds of trucks of aid are entering daily now when we inquired - and this was required in Trump's plan - U.N. agencies say fruits, vegetables, eggs and meat remain rare. The U.N. says actually a fifth of Gaza's households still say that they are only eating one meal a day. And so, right now, you can see Israeli chocolates and instant coffee in the markets in Gaza, but basic medicines, for example, aren't available. And we're also seeing reports that the U.S. now is taking a bigger role in overseeing aid, and so that could be why today, for example, Israel said it would open a vital crossing into northern Gaza, where, if you recall, a famine was declared over the summer.
DETROW: And even though many politicians are talking about this as a lasting peace, this is a reminder this is just step one in a multiphase complicated process. What needs to happen for this deal to move on to the second phase?
BATRAWY: So this is where the plan will really succeed or falter. It calls for Hamas to disarm, then for Israel to withdraw to the periphery and then for reconstruction of Gaza to begin. But you need Egyptian forces and others to be in Gaza to oversee that. So the U.S. right now has a draft resolution before the U.N. Security Council to give that international stabilization force a clear mandate, but it's unclear which countries will actually send troops and when.
And while all this is dragging on, there's an idea floated by Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, that reconstruction could get started in Israeli-occupied east Gaza and that local Palestinian clans opposed to Hamas who are openly armed by Israel would also be in control of those areas. And so this idea is being called two Gazas, the western side that's under Hamas and the eastern side occupied by Israel. But it's very hard to imagine Palestinians voluntarily moving to an area occupied by Israel, even if there are homes being built there, or this idea of getting broad Arab support. And so the risk, Scott, is that the longer that it takes for that international stabilization force to be deployed, the more unstable Gaza becomes and the more entrenched its division.
DETROW: That is NPR's Aya Batrawy in Dubai. Thank you so much.
BATRAWY: Thanks. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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