Nostalgia and uncertainty: Gaza's displaced Palestinians in Egypt brace for ceasefire without peace

In a modest café tucked away on a side street of Cairo's Haram district, the air is thick with cigarette smoke, the aroma of Arabic coffee, and anticipation. Gathered around a flickering television set, a group of Palestinian men lean forward as news of ceasefire negotiations in Doha filters in.

There is no cheering, no clapping. Only silent stares and anxious faces. For many of them, the ceasefire isn't merely a headline. It's a potential lifeline or a fresh heartbreak.

Since Israel's war on Gaza began in October 2023, Cairo has become a reluctant sanctuary for thousands of Palestinians fleeing bombardment. Yet as talk of a truce intensifies once more, Palestinians in Egypt are not united in hope or what's next.

Some Palestinians do dream of returning to the ruins they fled, while others seek only a pause to grieve. A growing number of Palestinians also feel unanchored, stranded in a limbo between a homeland they barely survived and a host country that isn't eternal.

For the third consecutive day, Qatar is hosting indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel in Doha, as part of renewed international efforts to broker a ceasefire in Gaza.

According to sources familiar with the talks, mediators have reported cautious optimism, citing "positive momentum" and increased flexibility from both sides. While some gaps remain, diplomatic insiders describe the current round as the most promising in weeks.

Qatari officials, backed by Egypt and the United States, continue to shuttle between delegations in hopes of finalising a framework that could halt the devastating conflict and pave the way for broader political dialogue.

'I'll go back... even to the rubble'

Abu Khalil, 42, left Gaza after an Israeli airstrike flattened his home in Khan Younis. He crossed into Egypt through the Rafah border and now works in a vegetable shop, sharing a cramped flat with relatives on Faisal Street. But he is clear-eyed: "Cairo is a stopover, not a home."

"If the ceasefire holds, I'll return even if I sleep in a tent […] Gaza is not just a place. It's my people, my neighbours, my life. I didn't come here to settle. I left to survive," he told The New Arab, his voice heavy with emotion.

He gestures toward the television, which was broadcasting news about the Doha talks. "That screen decides our fate," he murmured.

For many like Abu Khalil, the truce is not an end; it is a beginning. A beginning fraught with difficult questions: How to return to homes that no longer exist? Who decides who goes back and when? And what if the bombs start falling again?

In her flat in Nasr City, Eman Salah, 27, stares at her phone as updates on the negotiations scroll past. Her reaction is subdued. "Everyone is waiting to hear good news, but what does good even mean now?" she asked TNA's correspondent.

A graduate in media studies, Salah fled Gaza after her sister was killed in an airstrike. She came to Cairo with her mother and younger brother and now spends her days applying for resettlement programs abroad.

"I'm not going back […] Not because I've given up on Gaza, but because Gaza is gone. What's left is rubble and ghosts," she lamented.

Like many young Palestinians, Salah's hopes no longer lie in return, but in departure. Turkey. Canada. Anywhere but here. "A ceasefire doesn't bring back what we lost. It just makes the silence louder," she stressed.

'Time to breathe'

In the dusty outskirts of 6th of October City, southwest of Cairo, Umm Nidal serves sweet mint tea in her narrow kitchen of a rented flat, while her eldest daughter runs a small stall outside selling homemade pastries.

From Beit Lahia in northern Gaza, Umm Nidal fled after an airstrike destroyed their neighbourhood and left her husband permanently disabled.

"The upcoming ceasefire is a pause to gather the dead and the living," she told TNA. "We needed this silence to mourn, breathe, and reconnect with those we've lost touch with. But silence isn't justice."

Her hands tremble slightly as she adjusts her headscarf. "This is the third time I've had to rebuild from nothing. Once during the 2008 war, again in 2014, and now during this war. How much can a person rebuild?" she remarked.

For Umm Nidal, true peace is more than just the absence of bombing. "We want to return whole, not just to breathe. With rights, homes, and without fear from the skies," she said.

Ayman Shahin, a Palestinian academic and researcher based in Cairo, has been documenting the lives of refugees displaced by the war. He noted a growing generational rift in responses to the ceasefire.

"Older Palestinians often see this as a second chance to go home, but for many youths, Egypt is not a shelter; it's a stepping stone to European countries. They don't see a future in Gaza, ceasefire or not," Shahin told TNA.

He said that most Palestinians in Egypt still lack formal refugee status and live in precarious conditions.

"The ceasefire does not resolve their uncertainty. It complicates it," he explained. "Return? Stay? Leave? These are existential questions now," he said.

"So far, no one knows who will rule Gaza, how reconstruction will happen, or what guarantees will be made. For now, people are holding their breath, but they don't know for what," he added.

'I want to return, but not to hell'

In New Cairo's Capital Madinty City, 34-year-old Laila Mohammed clutches her youngest daughter as she folds laundry in their two-room flat. She came to Egypt with her four children after losing her husband in a bombing raid on Rafah.

"If they opened the crossing tomorrow, I don't know if I'd go back," She told TNA. "Where would we live? What would we eat? I want to return, but not to hell."

Laila relies on charity and informal aid networks. She's managed to enrol her kids in a local school, but the instability eats at her. "Gaza is my home. But my children's safety comes first. A truce won't guarantee that," she said.

In fact, Egypt has seen waves of Palestinian displacement before in 1948, in 1967, and during the Intifadas. But this time feels different. The destruction in Gaza is almost total, the political leadership fragmented, and the horizon murky.

What unites Palestinians in Egypt today is not clarity, but a shared fragility. As negotiations play out in distant capitals, those displaced by war find themselves caught in limbo, suspended between past trauma and an uncertain future.

Some still dare to dream of return. Others have already let go. But all are united by a single, agonising truth: the truce, if it comes, will not be the end. It will be the start of yet another chapter [...] one they did not choose, and whose contours remain unknown.