Renfrewshire activists say they wait in hope that the agreed ceasefire in Gaza is maintained.
Paisley 4 Palestine, which has campaigned for an end to the killing in Gaza for 15 months, says it welcomes news of the cessation of military action involving Israel and Hamas.
John Kelly is a founding member of the group which has held countless demonstrations across the region in a bid to highlight the plight of the Palestinian people.
“Let’s hope that this may bring some relief for the people of Gaza and for the hostages and their families, on both sides,” John told the Paisley Daily Express. “I hope and pray that the killing stops and that somehow this will lead to less oppression being imposed upon the Palestinians.”
However, he admitted he remains nervous of what could happen in the coming days in a very fragile situation.
He said: “I guess that I am worried that this will fail to lead to a permanent ceasefire and cessation of assaults on Gaza. In the lead up to the ceasefire coming into effect, the Israeli Defence Forces continued killing people.
“My scepticism stems from the fact that, as [former United States president] Joe Biden says, this is essentially the deal which has been on the table since last May. What are [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s motives in signing up for it now?”
Although Israel has agreed to the deal in principle, it says it reserves the right to resume military action in the future.
As part of phase one of the ceasefire agreement, Hamas has agreed to release 33 hostages, including women and children, in exchange for Palestinians being held in Israeli jails; three hostages were released on Sunday.
The agreement was brokered by mediators Qatar and the United States.
Biden, who has now left office with Donald Trump returning to the White House, said it would “halt the fighting in Gaza, surge much needed-humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians, and reunite the hostages with their families”.
He said: “Even as we welcome this news, we remember all the families whose loved ones were killed in Hamas’s October 7 attack, and the many innocent people killed in the war that followed. It is long past time for the fighting to end and the work of building peace and security to begin.”
Israel launched a campaign to destroy Hamas, which is a proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UK, in response to the October 2023 attack which killed about 1,200 people and saw 251 others taken hostage.
More than 46,700 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry. The vast majority are women and children.
Most of the 2.3 million population has also been displaced, there is widespread destruction, and there are severe shortages of food, fuel, medicine and shelter due to a struggle to get aid to those in need.
Aid trucks were seen queueing at the border into Gaza in a bid to gain quick entry when the ceasefire took hold.
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