For the people of Gaza, the last three years have not been a distant political event but a daily struggle to stay alive, and the war that began on October 7, 2023 is remembered there as one of the most devastating chapters in Palestinian history, a chapter in which whole neighbourhoods, hospitals, schools and bakeries disappeared under bombardment and siege. More than 74,200 people have been killed according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, whose figures the United Nations considers reliable, and women and children make up around half of that toll, which means that for most of this war hardly a day passed without news of another child being pulled from the rubble, dying in a hospital short of medicine, or going hungry in a tent that offered no real shelter.
The wider picture is just as heavy, since the same ministry counts more than 175,000 wounded, and this means that a very large share of a small population has either lost a family member or carries an injury of its own. A whole generation has grown up knowing the sound of drones better than the sound of a school bell, and many of these children are now orphans, which is a loss that no announcement from a distant capital can repair. The war began after Hamas-led fighters attacked Israel and killed some 1,200 people, taking 251 others hostage, but the scale of what followed in Gaza has left many people around the world asking whether the response was ever in proportion to the crime.
The ceasefire of October 2025 brought some relief, and even the UN Secretary General has said so, yet it has not brought real peace. The heaviest fighting has stopped, but Israeli strikes have continued in what the military calls responses to threats or attacks, and the health ministry says that more than a thousand Palestinians have been killed since the truce began. On the third anniversary itself, new Israeli strikes were reported in Gaza City and Khan Yunis, which shows that the people of Gaza still cannot be sure of a quiet night.
The political side of the plan has barely moved either. Israeli forces now control over half of the territory, Hamas has not disarmed, a new Palestinian government has not arrived and reconstruction has not yet begun, and Israel says it will not withdraw its soldiers until Hamas has been verified as disarmed. For ordinary families the result is simple and cruel, because they remain in tents among the ruins, without the homes, the schools or the clean water that a real recovery would need.
This is why Secretary General Guterres asked, before the anniversary, for the ceasefire to become permanent and for humanitarian assistance to be allowed at scale. His words were careful, but the meaning was clear, which is that a truce without aid, rebuilding and a political future will slowly lose its value and may collapse altogether.
For Pakistan and the wider Muslim world, which have long supported a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, these three years carry a plain warning that the world cannot keep treating Gaza as a problem to be managed instead of a people to be protected. A lasting answer will need an end to attacks on civilians, full and steady aid, a Palestinian leadership that its own people accept, and a real path to statehood, because without these the same cycle will return.
Three years on, Gaza does not need another anniversary of mourning but a decision by the powers involved to turn a pause in fighting into a peace in which a child can finally sleep without fear.
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