Toowoomba Queens Park peace vigil organisers and participants responds to Gaza ceasefire

As a tense ceasefire begins between Israel and Hamas, Toowoomba’s Queens Park peace vigil organisers and participants have responded with relief and cautious optimism.

Supporters in Toowoomba who stood outside Queens Park calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza last year, have reacted after news a ceasefire agreement had come into place on Sunday, January 19, 2023.

On Sunday, after 15 months of war, a tense ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect, ushering in a moment of relief, not just for the civilians in Gaza, but also for affected communities around the world.

Throughout much of last year in Toowoomba, a group of residents could be seen at the corner of Queens Park most weekends, calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

Now that the ceasefire has come into effect, organisers and participants of the peace vigils have expressed relief mixed with fearful optimism for what comes next.

One of the participants is Toowoomba resident Zainab Ibdah, who grew up in Irbid, a city 25km from Golan Heights, after fleeing Palestine with her family, and came to Australia as a skilled immigrant in 1995.

Adorned in red, white, green and black a group of around 80 people holding Palestinian signs and flags stood at the Hume and Margaret St corner of Queens Park and showed their support for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Saturday, March 23, 2024. Picture: Christine Schindler

She said she was “hopeful that the ceasefire will bring an end to the bloodshed in Gaza”, but was concerned it beared the resemblance of the November 2023 ceasefire which lasted but a week, and feared the “freeing of hostages” was not Israel’s primary objective in Gaza.

For Amnesty International organiser Philip Armit, the ceasefire news comes as a relief, but also with a “horrible gut wrenching feeling” something will go wrong and only make it worse.

According to the Gaza health ministry, more than 46,900 people have been killed in Gaza by Israeli attacks since the brutal attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023 where more than 1200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.

It is a war that has left 90 per cent of Gaza’s 2.2 million population displaced, according to the United Nations.

Palestinians carry belongings amid building rubble in a ruined neighbourhood of Gaza's southern city of Rafah on January 20, 2025, as residents return following a ceasefire deal a day earlier between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group. (Photo by BASHAR TALEB / AFP)

As aid trucks flow into the Gaza Strip and the search for the dead begins, Palestinians are facing the rebuild of an estimated 60 per cent of buildings which have been damaged or destroyed.

The ceasefire on Sunday was heralded in with the exchange of three Israeli hostages and 90 Palestinian prisoners, and is the start of a six-week phase which would see 33 hostages released back to Israel.

It came on the eve of the inauguration of US President Donald Trump, who claimed credit for the ceasefire in his inaugural address, calling himself a “peacemaker and unifier”, while the previous US President Joe Biden said it was his team of “peacemakers” who “helped make this deal happen”.

US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump watch bands perform during the inaugural parade inside Capital One Arena, in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2025. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP)

For Ms Ibdah, while she was relieved the bombing had stopped, she was angry so many people had been killed in Gaza and “to start the clock at October 7, 2023, was to misconstrue a 76 year history of oppression and occupation by Israel”.

She recalled the Ramadan in 1968 when she was a nine-year-old where she watched a “horrific attack” in Irbid where “many from our neighbourhood died”.

Whether or not peace can be found in a two-state solution and whether or not there can be some sense of justice served for both sides remains doubtful, Mr Amit said.

Since the October 7 attack, the Online Hate Prevention Institute has recorded a significant increase across online platforms of instances of both Islamophobia and anti Semitism in Australia.

Previously an engineer, Toowoomba’s Federal MP for Groom Garth Hamilton spent time working on infrastructure projects in Saudi Arabia, and last year he made a week-long trip to Israel on behalf of Zionist lobby group Australia Israel and Jewish Affairs Council.

With the recent anti Semitic attack on a daycare centre in Sydney, Mr Hamilton said he was concerned Jewish Australians had become targets of “domestic terrorism” in such a short space of time.

He said he welcomed the ceasefire and remained “steadfast” in his support for Israel.