Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has finally agreed to a ceasefire deal.

The agreement marks the end of the Israeli assault on Gaza that began on October 7, 2023, and left the Palestinian enclave that was home to more than two million people in ruins. With the official death toll nearing 47,000 and more than 110,000 wounded, Palestinians in Gaza and those who care about their lives around the world are understandably rejoicing at the news.

But regrettably, this is hardly an end to Palestinian suffering. The “day after” this genocide in Gaza will not be any less devastating.

Over the past 15 months, Israel has transformed the long-besieged Palestinian enclave into a post-apocalyptic wasteland; methodically bombing, bulldozing or burning down every structure that its military happened to lay eyes on.

In mid-December, a UNOSAT assessment of satellite images revealed that 170,812 structures had been damaged or destroyed in Gaza since the beginning of Israel’s onslaught in October 2023.

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This number represents 69 percent of all structures in the enclave and approximately 245,123 housing units. It includes more than 90 percent of all school buildings, and every single one of Gaza’s universities. It includes (PDF) the Rafah Museum, the Jawaharlal Nehru Library at Al-Azhar University, and the Gaza Municipal Library. It includes the Great Mosque of Gaza and the Church of Saint Porphyrius. It includes most of Gaza’s hospitals and almost 70 percent of its health centres.

Satellite images also show that 70 percent of Gaza’s agricultural infrastructure has been systematically destroyed in the war, either by shelling or under the weight of heavy military vehicles. As a consequence, food production in Gaza has been at an all-time low throughout 2024. The enclave’s entire population is now food insecure and a significant majority are facing “extremely critical levels of hunger”.

In April 2024, a joint World Bank and UN assessment showed that 92 percent of Gaza’s primary roads were either damaged or destroyed. At least 75 percent of the telecommunication infrastructure is either damaged or destroyed. The Gaza Electricity Distribution Company has reportedly lost 90 percent of its machinery and equipment and incurred losses amounting to $450m.

In the last months of the Israeli military campaign, only one of three desalination plants were operational, providing only 7 percent of Gaza’s water supply needs. And, according to Oxfam, all the wastewater treatment plants and most of the sewage pumping stations in Gaza “have been forced to shut down” due to the Israeli-imposed “blockade on fuel and electricity”.

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But the real tragedy here is not the destroyed infrastructure, roads and buildings. What we witnessed in Gaza was the destruction of an entire society. Israel did not merely destroy the landscape. It ripped the very fabric of Gaza’s social, cultural, intellectual and economic life into pieces.

The official death toll of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has neared 50,000 – this is a number devastating in itself. Yet, it is very likely a massive undercount. Officials in Gaza lost their ability to keep an accurate count of the dead long ago. We know many thousands likely remain under the rubble. In June 2024, a study published by the Lancet estimated that the real death toll of Israel’s assault on Gaza could be more than 186,000. More than six months later, the death toll now undoubtedly far exceeds even this estimate.

Among those who perished in the carnage are artists and writers, such as Walaa al-Faranji, who was killed in an air strike in December 2024. There are poets like Refaat Alareer – the voice of a generation and a revered symbol of resistance and resilience, who was killed in what appeared to be a targeted air strike in December 2023.

Among the dead, there are also thousands of school teachers, university professors and students – children and young people who would have built the future of Gaza.

This staggering death toll also includes more than 130 journalists, such as Mustafa Thuraya and Hamza al-Dahdouh, who were killed in targeted attacks or by indiscriminate bombing while trying to do their jobs in unimaginably difficult conditions.

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Israel also killed more than 1,000 doctors and healthcare workers in this “war” – some with bombs, others with tank fire, for the crime of trying to help the sick and the wounded. Many were also killed, like Dr Ziad Eldalou, in Israeli detention centres and prisons.

Rebuilding Gaza after the genocide will be a daunting task – according to some estimates it will cost more than $50bn. But even such colossal investment won’t be enough to replace the thousands of brilliant minds – the doctors, the educators, the journalists – who were lost. No amount of money will be enough to heal and rebuild this society devastated by unimaginable violence and brutality.

The difficulty of rebuilding is also rooted in the fact that the survivors, those who are lucky enough to be able to celebrate the ceasefire today, are also traumatised, broken.

They have all been displaced many times over. They lost family, friends, and colleagues. They lost their homes, their community. They are not the same people they were 15 months ago, and healing will not be easy.

It will take years – if not decades – of unwavering global political investment in human development for Gaza to have a chance of recovering from this.

But even then, we cannot expect Israeli authorities to willingly allow for this recovery to happen. There is little reason to believe that Israel will respect this ceasefire, stop the arbitrary bombings and incursions for good, and let Gaza rebuild and heal in the “day after”.

So yes, for now, the war seems to be ending. But the future looks grim for Gaza. This is not to say that concerted international pressure on Israel to allow for the reconstruction of Gaza would not work. But, for now, the possibility of this seems slim as its most powerful ally, the United States, does not seem particularly eager to alter the status quo. Tragically, every indication shows the “day after” in Gaza will be as painful, as devastating and as unjust, as any “day before”.

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The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.