Gazans accepted the scale of the destruction in their old neighborhoods and Israelis awaited news of three recently freed hostages as a truce between Hamas and Israel resumed on Monday.
With the 15-month war at a standstill, Palestinians have returned to parts of the Gaza Strip they had fled, picking their way through vast swaths of rubble and scrambling to salvage what they could – a couch, a mattress, a chair or a cage – from the debris of their former homes.
“People can barely recognize the ruined places where they used to live,” 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 hurrying through the streets with his son Alhassan, 21, and trying to reconcile the piles of rubble on either side with their memories.
“This is Fahmy Abu Warda’s house. this is Abu Shaaban’s house,” Alhassan can be heard saying.
In Israel, which celebrated the return of the first group of hostages freed by Hamas under the truce, authorities offered only the broadest description of their conditions. Israel’s health ministry and the Sheba Medical Center, where the three women are staying in a closed ward with family members, said their primary commitment was to protect the privacy of the former prisoners as they received medical and psychological care.
“I am pleased to report that he is in a stable condition,” said one of their doctors, Professor Itai Pessach. “This allows us, and them, to focus on what is the most important thing right now: reuniting with their families.”
But the Israelis heard from one of the women on Monday.
“I’m back to life,” 28-year-old Emily Damari said on social media, describing herself as “the happiest person in the world.”
Ms. Damari was one of about 250 people taken hostage in the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. About a hundred are believed to be still in Gaza and about a third of them are believed to be dead. The 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 exchanges will take place once a week during the 42-day ceasefire.
Palestinians in Gaza rejoiced at the cessation of fighting. Gaza health officials say more than 47,000 people have been killed during the Israeli offensive that began after Hamas attacked in 2023. they do not distinguish between civilians and fighters.
But the scenes in the enclave and in Israel on Monday epitomized the bittersweet emotions felt on both sides of the border.
As the ceasefire took effect on Sunday, celebrations replaced explosions and hundreds of aid trucks began rolling into Gaza, where residents have endured a harsh year of hunger and deprivation. In Israel, the returning hostages were greeted with joyful 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, to say nothing of the prospect of a long-term end to the conflict, depends on the extension of the agreement.
“This is a moment of tremendous hope — fragile, but vital,” Tom Fletcher, the UN’s humanitarian secretary-general, said on social media.
The joy has also been tempered by expectations of prolonged hardship ahead and the knowledge that there is still no comprehensive plan for how Gaza will be rebuilt. Many of the two million residents there have been displaced at least once.
The task before us is unimaginably daunting.
Gazans returning to the southern city of Rafah found it mostly leveled. The mayor said 60 percent of the houses have been destroyed, as well as 70 percent of the city’s sewage system.
But after 15 months of hunger and scarcity, food and other vital supplies are now flowing into Gaza. More than 630 trucks entered the enclave on the first day of the ceasefire, according to United Nations officials.
During the fighting, far fewer made it – and when they did, it was often too dangerous to get help where it was needed. Israel’s military campaign defeated Hamas without replacing it, creating a power vacuum. As the enclave descended into lawlessness, desperate mobs and organized gangs flocked to the trucks in hopes of securing a package of food or a bag of flour.
The scenes were not repeated on Sunday and Monday.
“What was very remarkable 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 group.
But violence broke out in the West Bank, where Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian villages amid anger over the planned release of Palestinian prisoners, some of whom were convicted of deadly attacks on Israelis, in the ceasefire deal.
In Sinjil, a village south of Nablus, dozens of men, some with slingshots, threw stones and set fire to houses, 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 wake of the Hamas offensive that sparked the Gaza war, Israeli leaders vowed to wipe out the militants once and for all. But in the first two days of the ceasefire, Hamas has made clear that it intends to remain a major force in the territory.
In an interview with The Times, a Hamas official, Musa Abu Marzouk, suggested that at least some senior members of the group hoped to engage in “dialogue” with the United States, even though the US government has since designated it a terrorist organization. 1997.
Mr. Abu Marzouk, who is based in Qatar, said Hamas was ready to receive an envoy from the Trump administration despite a long-standing US policy of supplying Israel with weapons and defending it in international institutions.
“He can come to see the world and try to understand their feelings and desires,” he said of the envoy, “so that the American position is based on the interests of all parties, and not just one party.”
The report was made by Himba Yazbek, Nathan Odenheimer, Fatima Abdul KarimandAfif Amir.
