Thousands of Palestinians continued to travel north towards Gaza City, the focus of Israeli attacks over the past two months, hopeful the ceasefire would bring an end to the war.
“There is a lot of joy among the people,” said Abdou Abu Seada, adding that the joy was tempered by exhaustion after two years of war that has destroyed much of Gaza.
Government spokesperson Shosh Bedrosian said that Israel expected the hostages to start being released early Monday morning with the 20 living hostages to be released together.
In the event that hostages were released earlier, Israel was ready to receive them, she said. Their release is to be followed later by the handover of bodies of the remaining 28 deceased hostages.
Hamas will release its remaining hostages on Monday and will play no role in Gaza’s future government, the group told AFP, as US President Donald Trump and other world leaders prepared to convene in Egypt for a major peace summit.
Trump will first pass through Israel, addressing parliament and meeting with hostage families Monday before heading to Egypt’s Sharm El-Sheikh for the summit, where a “document ending the war in the Gaza Strip” is expected to be signed, according to Cairo’s foreign ministry.
As anxious but relieved Israeli families counted down the hours until their loved ones’ return, desperate Palestinians picked through the ruins of their homes in Gaza City and aid trucks queued to deliver badly needed supplies.
The third day of the ceasefire saw some aid trucks cross into Gaza, but residents in Khan Yunis, in the south of the Strip, said some shipments were being ransacked by starving residents in chaotic scenes.
“We don’t want to live in a jungle. We demand aid be secured and respectfully distributed,” said Mohammed Zarab. “Look at how the food is lying on the ground. Look! People and cars are trampling it.”
For Mahmud al-Muzain, another bystander, the seizure of the aid parcels showed that Gaza did not trust that the US-led negotiations would lead to a long-term peace.
“Everyone fears the war will return. People steal the aid and store it in their homes,” he told AFP. “We stockpile food out of fear and worry that the war will come back.”
Any optimism that 38-year-old Fatima Salem might have felt when Israeli forces withdrew from her neighbourhood in Gaza City was shattered when she returned home to find it gone.
“I returned to Sheikh Radwan with my heart trembling,” she told AFP. “My eyes kept searching for landmarks I had lost — nothing looked the same, even the neighbours’ houses were gone.
“Despite the exhaustion and fear, I felt like I was coming back to my safe place. I missed the smell of my home, even if it’s now just rubble. We will pitch a tent next to it and wait for reconstruction.”
The Israel Prison Service said it had transferred some Palestinian prisoners to other facilities ahead of their expected release. The Israeli Ministry of Justice has released the names of 250 Palestinians, convicted of murder and other serious crimes, who are to be freed under the deal.
The list does not include senior Hamas commanders that the Islamist militant group had sought to free, or prominent figures from other factions such as Marwan Al Barghouti or Ahmed Saadat.
Although that was not expected to derail the agreement, Hamas’ prisoners information office said that talks with Israeli mediators over the list of prisoners to be freed were ongoing.
Israel is also to release 1,700 Palestinians who have been detained in Gaza since October 7, 2023 and 22 Palestinian minors, along with the bodies of 360 militants. Israeli government spokesperson Bedrosian said the prisoners would be released once the living hostages reach Israeli territory.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said that once the hostages were returned, the military would destroy underground tunnels in Gaza built by Hamas.
Palestinians returning to northern Gaza have described widespread devastation. Rescue workers warned there could be unexploded ordnance and bombs in the area.
Amjad Al Shawa, who heads a Palestinian organisation coordinating with aid groups, estimated 300,000 tents were needed to temporarily house 1.5 million displaced Gazans.
“We couldn’t believe the destruction we have seen,” Rami Mohammad-Ali, 37, said by phone after walking 15 km with his son from Deir Al Balah to Gaza City.
Israelis were looking forward keenly to Monday, when Hamas is expected to release its remaining 48 hostages, living and dead.
Late Saturday, massive crowds gathered in Tel Aviv to support hostage families and cheer Trump’s peace envoy, Steve Witkoff.
Thousands packed “Hostage Square” — the scene of many protests and vigils during the two years since Hamas’s unprecedented October 7, 2023 attacks triggered the latest war — chanting “Thank you Trump!”.
“My emotions are immense, there are no words to describe them — for me, for us, for all of Israel, which wants the hostages home and waits to see them all return,” said Einav Zangauker, mother of 25-year-old hostage Matan Zangauker.
Hamas will free the captives, 20 of whom Israel believes are still alive, in exchange for nearly 2,000 prisoners held in Israeli jails.
“According to the signed agreement, the prisoner exchange is set to begin on Monday morning,” Hamas official Osama Hamdan told AFP in an interview.
After Trump’s visit to Israel on Monday, he and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will chair a summit of leaders from more than 20 countries in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, the Egyptian presidency announced.
The meeting will aim “to end the war in the Gaza Strip, enhance efforts to achieve peace and stability in the Middle East, and usher in a new era of regional security”, it said.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said he will attend, as has Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer, his counterparts from Italy and Spain, Giorgia Meloni and Pedro Sanchez, and French President Emmanuel Macron.
Hamas and Israel are not expected to take part.
Despite the apparent breakthrough, mediators still have the tricky task of securing a longer-term political solution that will see Hamas hand over its weapons and step aside from running Gaza.
A Hamas source close to the group’s negotiating committee told AFP on Sunday that it would not participate in post-war Gaza governance.
“Hamas will not participate at all in the transitional phase, which means it has relinquished control of the Strip, but it remains a fundamental part of the Palestinian fabric,” the source said, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
But the official pushed back on calls for Hamas to lay down its weapons.
“Hamas agrees to a long-term truce, and for its weapons not to be used at all during this period, except in the event of an Israeli attack on Gaza,” the source said.
Under the Trump plan, as Israel conducts a phased withdrawal from Gaza’s cities, it will be replaced by a multi-national force from Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, coordinated by a US-led command centre in Israel.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed at least 67,682 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures the United Nations considers credible.
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