When — or if — the guns fall silent, Gaza’s children will hear something that they have lost: the sound of silence.
If the wishes of Gaza’s children have found their echo in peace deal being negotiated in Sharm El-Sheikh, this could truly be a new beginning.
For the first time, many will fall asleep without the deafening roar of missiles, the echo of explosions, the relentless buzz of drones or the constant screams of children. The screams and nightmares that once filled anxious nights may fade, replaced — perhaps — by the unfamiliar quiet of safety and sleep.
There are no winners in wars. I have seen this truth in the faces of children and mothers in war zones — in Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine and beyond. No words can truly capture what brutal wars leave behind; lives and landscapes change forever.
Approximately 20,000 children are amongst the 67,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza since Oct 2023. 1,200 Israelis were also killed in Israel. Children never start wars, yet they suffer the most. Hundreds buried under tons of rubble where once stood homes, schools and hospitals. Thousands more are wounded, orphaned, or lost in the shades of emotional trauma. Here, peace must travel in one direction, towards every child.
Silence, in Gaza, would not be emptiness; it would be the sound of survival, of life daring to return. It may mark the beginning of a new hope for children — to start dreaming of a day they could get a new school bag, a football, a playground and fly a kite in a sky free of the roar of fighter jets.
Fear may give way to real lullabies — sung by mothers who no longer have to whisper and cry in the dark. Many of them have watched their children being killed or amputated. For these children and their mothers, peace is a new moment, a new beginning. They carry the painful memories of the past as they move forward. Peace is the freedom to wake up and find their homes or schools, or whatever is left where homes and schools stood, still in their imagination. It is the joy of hearing laughter instead of sirens and speeding ambulances.
No child should be part of war, never. And true peace is not only the silencing of weapons. It is a starting point for healing wounds that bullets and bombs leave behind. It is rebuilding classrooms where laughter can replace the sound of falling rubble. It is helping children unlearn fear — and to think of celebrations, not death.
Families might rebuild their mornings with the simple act of making tea and breathing freely without fear — small moments that carry immense meaning when peace has been absent for so long.
Peace is not defined only by the absence of wars and is not a pause between two wars. In Gaza, a whole generation of children have lived through wars or conflict six times - in 2006, 2008, 2012, 2014, 2021 and another one since October 2023. There is only so much that young minds can take. I have seen first-hand the inexplicable brutality of war, and the impact of weapons and blast injuries and burn injuries on children in Gaza and other war zones during my humanitarian missions. I have also witnessed the determination of children in Gaza to beat despair.
That is why peace must travel in one direction — towards every child, every family, every shattered classroom and bombed playground. Negotiations may start in closed rooms. In true sense, peace is what must be lived in homes, schools, hospitals, libraries, market cafes and streets. Peace is often the sound of crayons scratching on paper instead of warning sirens. It is a girl walking safely to school, or a child kicking a football without fear, or flying a kite. Peace becomes a reality when children start talking in future tense and when a family dares to plan for tomorrow.
Yesterday, I visited a humanitarian warehouse in Cairo. Young volunteers — some still in college — stood shoulder to shoulder with my colleagues from Plan International Egypt, packing food and loading trucks headed for Gaza. There was a quiet rhythm to their work, a shared purpose that spoke louder than words. Hope was everywhere — in their hands, in their eyes, in the way they moved faster as another anxious, yet more optimistic day, progressed. Each box carried more than food; it carried care, compassion, and the belief that Gaza’s children deserve a tomorrow filled with peace.
When peace finally comes — and we must all believe it will, even when every peace negotiation looks shaky, and “is one step forward and two steps backwards” as peace negotiators often describe the moment — it will not be hollow. It will be sacred. It will be the soft echo of a people reclaiming their humanity, one heartbeat, one child, one dawn at a time.
For Gaza’s children, peace is the right to grow up with dignity, to laugh without flinching, to rebuild memories not of war, but of wonder. Silence, in that sense, is not emptiness; it has the potential to be music of healing.
I remember 2009 vividly — another brutal war, another mission. Amid the dust and debris in Gaza, I met 12-year-old Omsiyat. She asked me a question that has stayed with me since: “Why are children made to suffer in wars?”
Omsiyat and her young friends were picking up burnt books and crayon peace posters out of the rubble of their partly charred school. A smile (I would call a ‘one and a half smile’) broke on the face of another girl when she spotted a colourful poster she had drawn. She told me that she is happy she got it back, sad the bombs burned a part of it, trying, even then, to find light amid the ashes.
When peace travels in one direction, it is about hope and life. Mahmoud Darwish, Palestinian national poet, wrote “There is so much in this land worth living for”, something Gaza’s children deserve.
Dr Unni Krishnan is global humanitarian director, Plan International.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author's and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK.