Gazans realized the scale of the devastation of their old neighborhoods and Israelis awaited news on the three newly released hostages as a day-long ceasefire between Hamas and Israel continued Monday.
With the war’s 15-month lull, Palestinians returned to the parts of the Gaza Strip from which they fled, picking their way through vast areas of rubble and trying to salvage what they could – a sofa, a mattress, a chair or a crate – from the rubble of their old homes.
“People can barely recognize the destroyed places where they lived,” said Montaser Bahja, an English teacher, a day after visiting his old neighborhood in the northern city of Jabaliya.
In a video shared with The New York Times, Mr. Bahja, 50, can be seen running through the streets with his son Alhassan, 21, and trying to reconcile the piles of rubble looming on either side with their memories .
“This is the house of Fahmy Abu Warda; this is the house of Abu Shaaban,” Alhassan is heard saying.
In Israel, which celebrated the return of the first group of hostages released by Hamas as part of the truce, authorities offered only a broader description of their conditions. Israel’s Health Ministry and Sheba Medical Center, where the three women are in a closed wing with family members, said their main commitment was to safeguard the former prisoners’ privacy as they received medical and psychological care.
“I am happy to report that they are in stable condition,” said one of their doctors, Prof. Itai Pessach. “This allows us and them to focus on what is most important for now: joining their families.”
But on Monday the Israelis heard from one of the women.
“I came back to life,” Emily Damari, 28, said on social media, describing herself as “the happiest person in the world.”
Ms Damari was one of around 250 people taken hostage in the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023. Around a hundred are believed to still be in Gaza, and around a third of these are dead. Militants also killed about 1,200 people that day, Israel says.
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. The return of the three hostages was followed by the release of 90 prisoners, and the exchanges will take place once a week during the 42 days of truce.
Palestinians in Gaza rejoiced at the pause in fighting. Gaza health officials say more than 47,000 people have been killed in the Israeli assault that began after the 2023 Hamas attack; they make no distinction between civilians and combatants.
But scenes set Monday in the enclave and in Israel embody the bittersweet emotions felt on both sides of the border.
On Sunday, as the truce took effect, celebrations replaced explosions and hundreds of aid trucks began arriving in Gaza, where residents have endured a harsh year of hunger and deprivation. In Israel, the returned hostages were greeted with jubilant hugs from relatives and friends. And fireworks and cheering crowds greeted newly freed Palestinian prisoners in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
But the joy was overshadowed by uncertainty. The next round of negotiations between Hamas and Israel is expected to be even more difficult than those that led to the 42-day ceasefire.
The fate of more than 60 other hostages and thousands of other Palestinian prisoners in Israel, not to mention the prospect of a long-term end to the fighting, depends on the extension of the agreement.
“This is a moment of enormous hope – fragile, but vital,” Tom Fletcher, UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said on social media.
The joy was also overshadowed by expectations of prolonged hardship ahead and the realization that there is still no comprehensive plan for how to rebuild Gaza. Many of the two million residents have been displaced at least once,
The task ahead is unimaginably arduous.
Gazans returning to the southern city of Rafah found it largely razed. The mayor said 60 percent of homes were destroyed, as was 70 percent of the city’s sewage system.
But after 15 months of hunger and shortages, food and other vital supplies are now flowing into Gaza. According to United Nations officials, more than 630 trucks entered the enclave on the first day of the ceasefire.
During the fighting, far fewer made it through, and when they did, it was often too dangerous to get help where it was needed. Israel’s military campaign pushed back Hamas without replacing it, creating a power vacuum. As the enclave descended into lawlessness, desperate crowds and organized gangs swarmed onto trucks in the hope of securing a parcel of food or a sack of flour.
The scenes were not repeated on Sunday and Monday.
“What was very clear is that none of the trucks that came in yesterday were looted,” said Nebal Farsakh, a spokesman for the Palestinian Red Crescent, a humanitarian aid organization.
But violence has erupted in the West Bank, where Israeli settlers have attacked Palestinian villages in anger over the planned release of Palestinian prisoners, some of whom have been convicted of deadly attacks on Israelis, under the cease-and-desist agreement the fire.
In Sinjil, a village south of Nablus, dozens of men, some armed with slingshots, threw rocks and set fire to homes, according to residents and videos verified by the Times.
“People were screaming as their houses burned,” said one resident, Ayed Jafry, 45. Several people were injured, including an 86-year-old man, he said.
In the aftermath of the Hamas attack that sparked the war in Gaza, Israeli leaders vowed to eliminate the militants once and for all. But in the first two days of the ceasefire, Hamas made clear that it intends to remain a major force in the territory.
In an interview with the Times, a Hamas official, Mousa Abu Marzouk, said that at least some senior members of the group hoped to engage in a “dialogue” with the United States, although the American government has since designated it as an organization terrorist. 1997.
Abu Marzouk, who lives in Qatar, said Hamas was ready to welcome a Trump administration envoy despite a long-standing American policy of supplying weapons to Israel and defending it at international institutions.
“He can come and see the people and try to understand their feelings and desires,” he said of the envoy, “so that the American position can be based on the interests of all parties, and not just one party.”
Reporting contribution was provided by Yazbek error, Nathan Odenheimer, Fatima Abdul KarimANDAfif Amireh.