Palestinians Celebrate Their Return to Northern Gaza After 15 Months of War 

Displaced Palestinians return to their homes in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday, Jan. 27, 2025, following Israel's decision to allow thousands of them to go back for the first time since the early weeks of the 15-month war with Hamas. (AP)
Displaced Palestinians return to their homes in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday, Jan. 27, 2025, following Israel's decision to allow thousands of them to go back for the first time since the early weeks of the 15-month war with Hamas. (AP)
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Palestinians Celebrate Their Return to Northern Gaza After 15 Months of War 

Displaced Palestinians return to their homes in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday, Jan. 27, 2025, following Israel's decision to allow thousands of them to go back for the first time since the early weeks of the 15-month war with Hamas. (AP)
Displaced Palestinians return to their homes in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday, Jan. 27, 2025, following Israel's decision to allow thousands of them to go back for the first time since the early weeks of the 15-month war with Hamas. (AP)

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians streamed into Gaza’s most heavily destroyed area on Monday after Israel opened the north for the first time since the early weeks of the war with Hamas, a dramatic reversal of their exodus 15 months ago. 

As a fragile ceasefire held into a second week, Israel was told by Hamas that eight of the hostages to be freed during the deal's first phase are dead. 

Joyous crowds of Palestinians, some holding babies or pushing wheelchairs, walked along a seaside road all day and into the night, carrying bedrolls, bottles of water and other belongings. Armed and masked Hamas fighters flashed a victory sign. The crowd was watched over by Israeli tanks on a nearby hill. 

The United Nations said over 200,000 people were observed moving north on Monday morning. 

Palestinians who have been sheltering in squalid tent camps and former schools are eager to return to their homes — even though they are likely damaged or destroyed. Many had feared that Israel would make their displacement permanent. 

Yasmin Abu Amshah, a mother of three, said she walked 6 kilometers (nearly 4 miles) to reach her damaged but habitable Gaza City home. She saw her younger sister for the first time in over a year. 

“It was a long trip, but a happy one,” she said. 

Many saw their return as an act of steadfastness after Israel’s military campaign, which was launched in response to the Hamas group's Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel. The return was also seen as a repudiation of US President Donald Trump’s suggestion that many Palestinians be resettled in Egypt and Jordan. Both countries rejected the idea. 

Families of dead hostages are informed  

Whether hostages are still alive inside Gaza has been a heartbreaking question for waiting families who have pushed Israel’s government to reach a deal to free them, fearing that time was running out. 

Before Monday’s announcement, Israel believed that at least 35 of the about 90 hostages taken in the Oct. 7 attack and still in Gaza were dead. 

Government spokesman David Mencer told journalists that a list received overnight from Hamas on the status of the 33 hostages being freed under the ceasefire's first phase showed eight were dead. 

The families have been informed, he said, adding that the information matched what Israeli intelligence had believed. 

The ceasefire is aimed at winding down the deadliest and most destructive war ever fought between Israel and Hamas. Gunmen killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in the Oct. 7 assault and abducted another 250. 

Israel responded with an air and ground war that has killed over 47,000 Palestinians, over half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. It does not say how many of the dead were combatants. Israel says it has killed over 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence. 

In all, around 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced, and they face new health risks as they return. 

‘The joy of return’  

Ismail Abu Mattar, a father of four who waited for days near the crossing point for northern Gaza, described scenes of jubilation, with people singing, praying and crying. 

“It’s the joy of return,” said Abu Mattar, whose relatives were among the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled or were driven out of what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding its creation. “We had thought we wouldn’t return, like our ancestors.” 

In the war’s opening days, Israel ordered the evacuation of the north and sealed it off after ground troops moved in. Around a million people fled south while hundreds of thousands remained in the north, which had some of the heaviest fighting and the worst destruction. 

The opening to the north was delayed for two days as Israel said Hamas had changed the order of the hostages it released in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. Local medical officials said Israeli forces opened fire at the waiting crowd and killed several Palestinians over the weekend. Israel's military said it fired warning shots at approaching groups it deemed a threat. 

Mediators resolved the dispute overnight. Hamas called the return “a victory for our people.” 

Later Monday in central Gaza, Awda hospital said it received the body of a child killed in the Nuseirat refugee camp when returnees were hit, and three others were wounded. It said three more were wounded in a separate attack near the camp. 

Israel's military said one of its aircraft fired “to distance a number of suspicious vehicles” moving north in unauthorized areas. And it said it fired shots in northern Gaza to “remove” someone it deemed a threat who didn't move away. 

Hostage dispute rattled week-old ceasefire  

Palestinians were crossing on foot without inspection through part of the Netzarim corridor, a military zone bisecting the territory just south of Gaza City that Israel carved out early in the war. A checkpoint for vehicles opened later on Gaza’s main north-south highway, where traffic was backed up for around 3 kilometers (2 miles). 

Under the ceasefire agreement, vehicles are to be inspected for weapons before entering the north. 

An Egyptian official said Egyptian contractors, along with a US firm, run checkpoints that inspect vehicles heading via Salahuddin road. The contractors are part of an Egyptian-Qatari committee implementing the ceasefire, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. The contractors are cleared by Israel. 

Israel had delayed the crossing's opening, which was supposed to happen over the weekend, saying it would not allow Palestinians north until a civilian hostage, Arbel Yehoud, was released. Israel said she should have been released before four female soldiers who were freed on Saturday. 

Qatar, a key mediator, announced early Monday that Yehoud and two other hostages would be released by Friday. Israel said the release — which will include female soldier Agam Berger — will take place on Thursday. Another three hostages should be released on Saturday as previously planned. 

There were mixed emotions among Israelis watching the scene in Gaza from the nearby city of Sderot. Some expressed mistrust toward the Palestinians. Others were empathetic. 

“Let them come back home safely and conduct a normal life,” said one, Rachel Osher. “We also want it. We want the same on both sides of the border.” 



Villagers in Southern Lebanon Begin to Return Home as Israeli Army Withdraws Under Ceasefire Deal

Destroyed houses caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive, in the town of Kfar Kila, southern Lebanon, today, Feb. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Destroyed houses caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive, in the town of Kfar Kila, southern Lebanon, today, Feb. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
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Villagers in Southern Lebanon Begin to Return Home as Israeli Army Withdraws Under Ceasefire Deal

Destroyed houses caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive, in the town of Kfar Kila, southern Lebanon, today, Feb. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Destroyed houses caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive, in the town of Kfar Kila, southern Lebanon, today, Feb. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Israeli forces withdrew Tuesday from border villages in southern Lebanon under a deadline spelled out in a US-brokered ceasefire agreement that ended the latest Israel-Hezbollah war, but stayed in five strategic overlook locations inside Lebanon.

Top Lebanese leaders denounced the continued presence of the Israeli troops as an occupation and a violation of the deal, maintaining that Israel was required to make a full withdrawal by Tuesday. The troops' presence is also a sore point with the Hezbollah group, which has demanded action from the authorities.

Lebanese soldiers moved into the areas from which the Israeli troops withdrew and began clearing roadblocks set up by Israeli forces and checking for unexploded ordnance. They blocked the main road leading to villages, preventing anyone from entering while the military was looking for any explosives left behind.

Most of the villagers waited by the roadside for permission to go and check on their homes but scores pushed aside the roadblocks to march in. Elsewhere, the army allowed the residents to enter.

Many of their houses were demolished during the more than yearlong conflict or in the two months after November’s ceasefire agreement when Israeli forces were still occupying the area.

In the border village of Kfar Kila, people were stunned by the amount of destruction, with entire sections of houses wiped out. Some knelt on the ground and prayed in the village's main square.

“What I’m seeing is beyond belief. I am in a state of shock,” said Khodor Suleiman, a construction contractor, pointing to his destroyed home on a hilltop. “I am feeling a mixture of happiness and pain." said Suleiman, who had last been in Kfar Kila six months ago.

In Kfar Kila's main square, Lebanese troops deployed as a military bulldozer removed rubble from the street. As people gathered in the square, a young man ran in, screaming that he had found two men alive on the edge of the village.

An ambulance rushed to the distant area and then quickly drove away from the village, preventing anyone from looking inside. Residents said later the two young men were members of Hezbollah and had been hiding out inside a grocery shop for three months until they were found on Tuesday.

Abbas Fadallah from Kfar Kila said that his family’s house that was built 105 years ago was now a pile of debris. Fadallah said he is happy to return but sad because “many civilians were martyred.”

Kfar Kila’s mayor, Hassan Sheet, told The Associated Press that 90% of the village homes are completely destroyed while the remaining 10% are damaged. “There are no homes nor buildings standing,” he said, adding that rebuilding will start from scratch.

Also Tuesday, Ayman Jaber entered Mhaibib, a village perched on a hill close to the Israeli border that was leveled by a series of explosions on Oct. 16. The Israeli army had released a video showing blasts ripping through the village in the Marjayoun region.

The Associated Press interviewed Jaber and his family early November when Jaber said he worried Israel would again set up a permanent presence in southern Lebanon and that the home he had built over the past six years for himself, his wife and their two sons, would be gone.

That worry, at least, turned out to be well-founded. “Not a single house in the village is still standing,” Jaber said. “It is like an earthquake wiped out the village.”

“The situation breaks my heart,” Jaber said, as he stood inside the village’s cemetery. “They dug up the graves and opened the vaults. I don’t understand what security threat the dead posed to them.”

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the Israeli army “will stay in a buffer zone in Lebanon in five control posts" to guard against any ceasefire violations by Hezbollah. He also said the army had erected new posts on the Israeli side of the border, and sent reinforcements there.

“We are determined to provide full security to every northern community,” Katz said.

However, Lebanon's three top officials — the country's president, prime minister and parliament speaker — in a joint statement said that Israel’s continued presence at the five locations was in violation of the ceasefire agreement. They called on the UN Security Council to take action to force a complete Israeli withdrawal.

“The continued Israeli presence in any inch of Lebanese territory is an occupation, with all the legal consequences that result from that according to international legitimacy,” the statement said.

The Israeli military presence was also criticized in a joint statement by the UN special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, and the head of the UN peacekeeping force in the country, Lt. Gen. Aroldo Lázaro.

The two, however, warned that this should not “overshadow the tangible progress that has been made” since the ceasefire agreement.

Hezbollah began firing rockets across the border on Oct. 8, 2023, one day after a deadly Hamas-led incursion into southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza. Israel responded with shelling and airstrikes in Lebanon, and the two sides became locked in an escalating conflict that became a full-blown war in late September.

More than 4,000 people were killed in Lebanon and more than 1 million were displaced at the height of the conflict, more than 100,000 of whom have not been able to return home. On the Israeli side, dozens of people were killed and some 60,000 are displaced.

Hussein Fares left Kfar Kila in October 2023 for the southern city of Nabatiyeh. When the fighting intensified in September he moved with his family to the city of Sidon, where they were given a room in a school housing displaced people.

“I have been waiting for a year and a half to return,” said Fares who has a pickup truck and works as a laborer. He said he understands that the reconstruction process will take time.