As Gazans grapple with the scale of the devastation in their former neighbourhood, Israelis awaited news about three newly freed hostages as the previous day’s ceasefire between Hamas and Israel continued on Monday.
With a pause in the 15-month war, Palestinians are scrambling through vast swaths of rubble to salvage what they can, including sofas, mattresses, chairs and wooden boxes, in the Gaza Strip they have fled. Some are coming back. From the remains of a former home.
“People can hardly recognize the destroyed places where they once lived,” English teacher Montaser Bahaja said a day after visiting an old neighborhood in the northern city of Jabaliya.
A video shared by The New York Times shows Bajja, 50, rushing down the street with her son Alhassan, 21, trying to reconcile their memories with the towering piles of rubble on either side. The figure is shown.
“This is Fahmy Abu Warda’s house. This is Abu Sha’aban’s house,” Alhassan was heard saying.
Israel celebrated the return of the first group of hostages freed by Hamas as part of a cease-fire agreement, but authorities provided only the broadest explanation of their situation. Israel’s Ministry of Health and the Sheba Medical Center, where the three women are staying in a closed ward with their families, said their primary responsibility was to protect the privacy of the prisoners while they received medical and psychological care.
“I am happy to report that their condition is stable,” said one of the doctors, Professor Itai Pesach. “This will allow us and them to focus on what is most important right now: being together with our families.”
But The Israeli was contacted by one of the women on Monday.
“I’m back to life,” Emily Damali, 28, said on social media, describing herself as “the happiest person in the world.”
Damali was one of about 250 people taken hostage in the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023. About 100 people are believed to still be in Gaza, and about a third of them are thought to have died. Israel says the militants killed about 1,200 people that day.
Under the terms of the ceasefire, Hamas agreed to release 33 hostages in exchange for the release of more than 1,000 Palestinians from Israeli prisons. Following the return of the three hostages, 90 prisoners were released and exchanges are to take place once a week during the 42-day ceasefire period.
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are happy that the fighting has stopped. Gaza health officials say more than 47,000 people have been killed in Israeli attacks that began after a Hamas attack in 2023. They do not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
But the scenes that unfolded in the enclave and in Israel on Monday embodied the bittersweet emotions felt on both sides of the border.
After the cease-fire took effect on Sunday, explosions were replaced by celebrations and hundreds of trucks laden with aid began rolling into the Gaza Strip, where residents have endured a grueling year of hunger and poverty. In Israel, the hostages were greeted with jubilant hugs from relatives and friends upon their return. And in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, fireworks and cheering crowds greeted newly freed Palestinian prisoners.
But the joy was overshadowed by anxiety. The next round of negotiations between Hamas and Israel is expected to be even more difficult than the one that led to a 42-day ceasefire.
The fate of more than 60 other hostages and thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israel, not to mention the prospect of a long-term end to the fighting, depends on the extension of the deal.
“This is a moment of great hope – fragile but vitally important,” UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher said on social media.
The joy has also been tempered by the prospect of continued hardship and the knowledge that there is still no comprehensive plan for how to rebuild Gaza. Many of the country’s 2 million residents have been displaced at least once,
The challenges ahead are unimaginably difficult.
Gazans returning to the southern city of Rafah found it largely flattened. The mayor said 60% of homes were destroyed and 70% of the city’s sewage system.
But after 15 months of hunger and deprivation, food and other vital supplies are now pouring into Gaza. More than 630 trucks entered the enclave on the first day of the ceasefire, UN officials said.
During battles, far fewer people were able to arrive, and even when they did, it was often too dangerous to get aid where it was needed. Israel’s military operations struck back without replacing Hamas, creating a power vacuum. As the enclave descended into lawlessness, desperate crowds and organized gangs flocked to trucks to secure packages of food and sacks of flour.
This scene was not repeated on Sunday and Monday.
“What was very remarkable was that none of the trucks that came in yesterday were looted,” said Nebal Farsak, a spokesman for the humanitarian organization Palestine Red Crescent.
But violence erupted in the West Bank, with Israeli settlers attacking Palestinian villages amid anger over plans to release Palestinian prisoners under a ceasefire agreement.
In the village of Sinjir, south of Nablus, dozens of people, including men with slingshots, threw stones and set a house on fire, according to residents and videos seen by The Times.
“People were screaming as their houses were on fire,” said Ayed Jafri, 45, one of the residents. Several people were injured, including an 86-year-old man.
In the aftermath of the Hamas attack that triggered the Gaza war, Israeli leaders vowed to wipe out the extremists once and for all. However, in the first two days of the ceasefire, Hamas has made it clear that it intends to remain the main force in the region.
Moussa Abu Marzouk, a Hamas official, said in an interview with the Times that at least some of the organization’s leaders do not want “dialogue” with the U.S., despite the U.S. government’s designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization. He suggested that he was. 1997.
Abu Marzouk, who is based in Qatar, said Hamas was ready to welcome a special envoy from the Trump administration, despite a long-standing US policy of arming Israel and defending it with international organizations.
“He can come to the people and try to understand their feelings and wishes, so that the U.S. position is based on the interests of all parties, not just one party.” It will happen,” he said.
Report contributor: Hiba Yazbek, natan odenheimer, Fatima AbdulkarimandAfif Amire.
