Palestinians begin to return to northern Gaza after deal on Israeli civilian hostage reached
Tens of thousands of Palestinians return to north Gaza as Israel opens checkpoints
(about 4 hours later)
Benjamin Netanyahu confirms agreement reached with Hamas for civilian hostage Arbel Yehoud to be released on Thursday
People begin long walk at dawn to what remains of their homes after 24-hour delay over release of Israeli hostage
Displaced Palestinians have started returning to north Gaza, the territory’s interior ministry said, after mediator Qatar said an agreement had been reached to release an Israeli civilian hostage, easing the first major crisis of the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians crossed back to northern Gaza on Monday morning after Israel opened military checkpoints that had divided the strip for more than a year, ending a displacement many feared could become permanent.
Qatar’s statement early on Monday said Hamas would hand over the civilian hostage, Arbel Yehoud, along with two other hostages before Friday. And on Monday, Israeli authorities will allow Palestinians to return to northern Gaza.
In the dawn light, large crowds of people began the long walk back to their homes – or what remained of them – in columns heavy with emotion and trepidation. More than 200,000 people crossed to the north in the morning, a security official told the AFP news agency.
The office of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a statement said the hostage release would take place on Thursday and confirmed that Palestinians would be able to move north on Monday.
Many knew they would be returning to nothing more than ruins, but wanted to pitch tents on their own land after long months shifting between crowded camps for displaced people in the south of the strip.
“The passage of displaced Palestinians has begun along the Al-Rashid Road via the western part of the Netzarim checkpoint towards Gaza City and the northern part” of the Gaza Strip, an official told the news agency AFP.
“My heart is beating. I thought I would never come back,” said Osama, a 50-year-old public servant and father of five, as he arrived in Gaza City.
Images posted on social media showed thousands of people streaming along sandy roadways fringed by the devastation of more than a year of Israeli airstrikes.
“Whether the ceasefire succeeds or not, we will never leave Gaza City and the north again, even if Israel would sent a tank for each one of us. No more displacement,” he told the Associated Press.
Responding to news that they can begin moving north early on Monday, displaced families burst into cheers at shelters and tent encampments. “No sleep, I have everything packed and ready to go with the first light of day,” said Ghada, a mother of five.
Some were looking for loved ones who had been unable or unwilling to leave; others hoped only to find bodies they knew were buried under rubble, to give them a dignified burial.
“At least we are going back home, now I can say war is over and I hope it will stay calm,” she told Reuters via a chat app.
The return had been scheduled to start on Sunday, but was delayed for 24 hours by the first major crisis in a fragile ceasefire deal.
Under the ceasefire deal, Israel on Saturday was to begin allowing Palestinians to return to their homes in northern Gaza. But Israel put that on hold because of Yehoud, who Israel said should have been released on Saturday. Hamas accused Israel of violating the agreement.
When the Israeli hostage Arbel Yehoud was not released on Saturday as expected, Israel accused Hamas of violating an agreement to release the remaining female civilians first, and said the checkpoints to the north would remain closed.
The release of Yehoud and two other hostages is in addition to the one already set for next Saturday, when three hostages should be released.
As the two sides traded accusations, the US president, Donald Trump, speculated about “clearing out” Gaza by moving up to 1.5 million Palestinians to neighbouring Arab countries. His comments added to fears among some in Gaza that they would never be allowed back to the north.
In addition, Hamas in a statement said the militant group had handed over a list of required information about all hostages to be released in the ceasefire’s six-week first phase. The Israeli prime minister’s office confirmed it had received the list.
Far-right politicians in Israel who opposed the ceasefire deal and want to restart the war, including the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, have also been vocal advocates of Jewish settlements in Gaza and long-term Israeli rule.
Thousands of Palestinians have gathered at Israeli roadblocks over the past two days, waiting to move north through the Netzarim corridor bisecting the territory, while local health officials on Sunday said Israeli forces fired on the crowd, killing two people and wounding nine.
Last-minute talks late into Sunday evening shored up the ceasefire deal, securing an agreement to release three hostages on Thursday – ahead of the original schedule – and open the routes north on Monday morning.
The US president, Donald Trump, meanwhile suggested that most of Gaza’s population be at least temporarily resettled elsewhere, including in Egypt and Jordan, to “just clean out” the war-ravaged territory. Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinians rejected that, amid fears that Israel might never allow refugees to return.
Israel said Hamas had also provided details on the status of all 26 hostages scheduled for release during this stage of the agreement. Some of them are believed to be dead.
Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim said Palestinians would never accept such a proposal, “even if seemingly well-intentioned under the guise of reconstruction”. He said the Palestinians can rebuild Gaza “even better than before” if Israel lifts its blockade.
Many Palestinians waited through the night at checkpoints to start their difficult journey as soon as possible on Monday morning. An Israeli military spokesperson announced overnight that the first checkpoint would open to people on foot at 5am, and vehicles would be allowed across after inspection from 9am.
Israeli forces fired on the crowds on three occasions overnight and into Sunday, killing two people and wounding nine, including a child, according to Al-Awda hospital, which received the casualties.
“No sleep. I have everything packed and ready to go with the first light of day,” Ghada, a mother of five, told Reuters on Sunday evening. “At least we are going back home. Now I can say war is over and I hope it will stay calm.”
Israel’s military in a statement said it fired warning shots at “several gatherings of dozens of suspects who were advancing toward the troops and posed a threat to them”.
Families trudged along roads destroyed by fighting, past wastelands of concrete that had once been familiar shops, offices, restaurants and apartment buildings, carrying the few possessions that had survived the war in plastic bags or on makeshift carts.
Israel has pulled back from several areas of Gaza under the ceasefire, which came into effect last Sunday. The military has warned people to stay away from its forces, which still operate in a buffer zone inside Gaza along the border and in the Netzarim corridor.
The crowd included children singing and playing tambourines, an amputee heading slowly north on crutches, and elderly Palestinians in wheelchairs or inching forward supported by younger relatives. Inside Gaza City, cheering crowds waited to greet them.
Newly sworn-in US defense secretary Pete Hegseth spoke with Netanyahu on Sunday in the Pentagon chief’s first call with a foreign official.
The first reunions happened within hours, with one tearful embrace between a mother and son captured on video.
“The secretary stressed that the United States is fully committed, under President Trump’s leadership, to ensure that Israel has the capabilities it needs to defend itself,” the Pentagon said in a statement, which did not specify why Hegseth spoke with Netanyahu instead of his direct counterpart Israel Katz.
Israel had divided Gaza in two early in the war, with a corridor bisecting the strip. Civilians heading south were allowed to cross it, but not to return north, where Israel began its ground operation in response to the cross-border attacks by Hamas on 7 October 2023.
In Lebanon, Israeli forces also opened fire on civilian protesters trying to reach their home villages, killing at least 22 people, including at least six women and a Lebanese army soldier, and injuring 124, according to Lebanese health officials. Israel accused the Lebanese army of violating key commitments under the ceasefire deal and the Israeli military warned civilians that returning home would “expose them to danger”.
Hundreds of thousands of people fled the area after blanket evacuation orders, and whole swathes of buildings were bombed intensively or destroyed by Israeli military demolitions.
Hours later on Sunday, the White House said that Israel and Lebanon had agreed to extend the deadline for Israeli troops to depart southern Lebanon until 18 February, after Israel requested more time to withdraw beyond the 60-day deadline stipulated in a ceasefire agreement that halted the Israel-Hezbollah war in late November.
Not everyone was able or willing to leave, and about 400,000 people who stayed on endured even harsher conditions than in the south. Israel maintained a tighter blockade within the broader controls on Gaza that meant only a trickle of food aid entered for months at a time.
Hamas freed four female Israeli soldiers on Saturday, and Israel released 200 Palestinian prisoners, most of whom were serving life sentences after being convicted of deadly attacks. But Israel said civilian hostage Yehoud should have been released ahead of the soldiers.
Northern Gaza was the first place where serious malnutrition took hold, and where international experts warned a famine was “imminent” during the war.
Israel also accused Hamas of failing to provide details on the conditions of hostages set to be freed in the remaining five weeks of the ceasefire’s first phase.
Many of those eager to return waited through the night for crossings to open, some for the second time after the delay on Sunday. On Sunday night, Israeli forces opened fire on waiting crowds, killing two and injuring nine including a child, health authorities in Gaza said.
Hamas said it had told mediators – the US, Egypt and Qatar – that Yehoud was alive and provided guarantees that she would be released.
Israel warned people to stay away from its forces, which still control a buffer zone along the border and in the Netzarim corridor. A spokesperson also told people to stay away from the sea, and avoid swimming, fishing or other marine activities in the coming days.
The ceasefire is aimed at ending the 15-month war triggered by Hamas’ 7 October 2023 attack and freeing hostages still held in Gaza in return for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. About 90 hostages are still in Gaza, and Israeli authorities believe at least a third, and up to half, have died.
On Sunday the new US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, rang the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in his first call with a foreign official and a signal of Trump’s focus on the relationship. The US was fully committed to ensuring Israel “has the capacities it needs to defend itself”, Hegseth said, a day after Trump lifted a Biden-era block on shipments of 2,000lb bombs.
Itzik Horn, the father of hostages Iair and Eitan Horn, called any resumption of fighting “a death sentence for the hostages” and criticised government ministers who want the war to go on.
Israel has also agreed an extension of a deadline for its troops to withdraw from southern Lebanon, now set for 18 February. Israel said the Lebanese army had not met its commitment to secure areas south of the Litani River, which Hezbollah forces have to hand over as part of the deal.
The ceasefire’s first phase runs until early March and includes the release of 33 hostages and nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. The second – and far more difficult – phase, has yet to be negotiated. Hamas has said it will not release the remaining hostages without an end to the war, while Israel has threatened to resume its offensive until Hamas is destroyed.
On Sunday, Israeli forces killed at least 22 people and injured 124 when they opened fire on civilian protesters trying to return to their home villages, and soldiers who accompanied them.
Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people in the 7 October attack, mostly civilians, and abducted about 250. More than 100 were freed during a weeklong ceasefire in November 2023. Israeli forces have rescued eight living hostages and recovered the remains of dozens more, at least three of them mistakenly killed by Israeli forces. Seven have been freed in the latest ceasefire.
Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry. It does not say how many of the dead were combatants. The Israeli military says it has killed more than 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.
Israeli bombardment and ground operations have flattened wide swaths of Gaza and displaced about 90% of its population of 2.3 million people. Many who have returned home since the ceasefire began have found only mounds of rubble.
