Over the course of the Gaza war, I’ve occasionally quoted a linguistics scholar in Gaza, Mohammed Alshannat, who is pretty much the opposite of Hamas.

In his writings before the war, Alshannat admired Western democracy, condemned suicide bombings and yearned for Arabs and Jews to live in peace and harmony. With the cease-fire, he is now trying to recover the bodies of relatives and bury them.

“Our beloved Gaza is gone,” he texted in English, adding that the survivors envy the dead: “They don’t have to see it.”

I understand this exhausted man’s heartbreak, after months of hunger and homelessness and seeing his son injured. The cease-fire is welcome, but there’s no clear path forward and not much to celebrate.

“All I want to do is put my tent on the rubbles and cry,” Alshannat wrote. “Pray for us.”

The Gaza war has been a tragedy and a failure for all. Hamas committed horrific atrocities in October 2023 that didn’t empower Palestinians but left them in misery. Israel then waged a war that killed tens of thousands of Palestinians without so far accomplishing its goals either of completely dismantling Hamas or of freeing all the hostages. Americans enabled this killing by providing billions of dollars in weaponry without meaningful restriction, making a mockery of our lofty talk of a “rules-based international order.”

What has all this war achieved? Hamas is degraded militarily but remains in charge and continues to hold Israeli hostages. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders for suspected war crimes. Thousands of Palestinian children are amputees, and 377 aid workers have been killed. And the holy grail of a sustainable peace in the Middle East seems no closer.