Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have begun returning to the northern part of the war-wracked Gaza Strip after a deal was reached between Hamas and Israel over exchange of Israeli captives and Palestinian prisoners.
It was announced that Hamas has agreed to release female Israeli captive Arbel Yehud and two others by Friday and provided information on the conditions of those set to be freed in the first phase of the ceasefire deal.
Gazans describe the return as historic, saying this is a victorious day.
The displaced Palestinians had been stranded behind Israeli military barriers despite the ceasefire.
The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was reached after 15 months of the regime's genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.
The implementation of the first phase of the deal began on January 19 and is expected to witness release of more than 1,890 Palestinians for 33 Zionists, who are among the 240 that Gaza’s resistance groups captured in October 2023.
The captives were ensnared during the historical Operation al-Aqsa Flood that served as an instance of retaliation against the regime’s decades-long campaign of Western-backed occupation and aggression against Palestinians.
The subsequent war claimed the lives of at least 47,306 Palestinians, mostly women and children.
The regime approved of the ceasefire after falling short of realizing any of its wartime objectives, including enabling the return of the captives, “eliminating” the Gazan resistance, and causing forced displacement of Gaza’s entire population to neighboring Egypt.
On Sunday, Hamas lambasted the regime for delaying the implementation of the ceasefire deal after Israeli forces killed and injured the Palestinians trying to return to the north.
Earlier, however, the regime said Palestinians could begin returning to the north on Monday after Gaza’s Islamic Jihad resistance movement confirmed that Israeli captive Arbel Yehud would be released before the next scheduled captive/prisoner swap.
Qatar, which had mediated ceasefire talks between Tel Aviv and Hamas alongside Egypt, had also announced that Hamas had agreed to release Yehud and two others by Friday and provided information on the conditions of those set to be freed in the first phase of implementation of the ceasefire deal.
Hamas calls it a victory
The movement, itself, issued a statement, describing the return of the displaced people as “a victory” for Palestinians and a defeat for the Israelis.
It said the scenes of the return of Palestinians to the areas from which they had been displaced, confirmed their connection to their land and once again proved “the failure of the occupation to achieve the aggressive goals of displacing people and breaking their steadfast will.”
The Islamic Jihad also described the return as a response to all those, who used to harbor the dream of enabling forced exodus of Palestinians.
“In an epic scene, hundreds of thousands of our displaced people are returning to northern Gaza, an area, which had been turned into a heap of rubble as a result of Zionists’ atrocities,” the group said.
It also described the Israeli regime’s conditioning the return of the displaced to Yehud’s release as an international move on the part of Tel Aviv to “destroy our people’s happiness in Gaza.”
“On this occasion, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement asserts that our people’s steadfastness would destroy whatever Zionist dream there is of stealing happiness from our hearts, and break the chains of the prison guards and occupiers.”
Former Israeli minister furious
The Israeli regime’s former minister of so-called “national security,” Itamar Ben-Gvir, however, decried the return as a victory for Hamas.
“The opening of the Netzarim highway this morning and the entry of tens of thousands of Gazans into the northern Gaza Strip are images of Hamas’ victory and another humiliating part of the reckless deal. This is not what ‘complete victory’ looks like – this is what complete surrender looks like,” he wrote on X, former Twitter.
The Israeli soldiers did not fight and give their lives in the Gaza Strip to make these photos possible, he said, adding, “We must return to war – and destroy!”
Ben-Gvir resigned from his post earlier this month in protest at the ceasefire deal.
He has long been opposed to cessation of the brutal Israeli military onslaught and called for the regime to “occupy” Gaza.
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