The return of Palestinian refugees to the northern Gaza Strip began this morning, following an agreement reached in indirect negotiations with Israel, a Hamas Interior Ministry official in the enclave told AFP. “The crossing of the Palestinian refugees began along the Ar Rashid road, through the western part of the Netzarim checkpoint towards Gaza City and towards the northern part” of the enclave, the official said.
It is recalled that the Israeli government announced that internally displaced residents will be allowed today to begin returning to their homes in the northern part of the enclave, following an agreement with the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas that will allow the release of additional hostages within the week, according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office.
This agreement will allow the fragile ceasefire between the Israeli armed forces and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which has suffered immense destruction after 15 months of war, to continue, with almost the entire population (2,4 million pre-war) forcibly displaced, in most cases repeatedly.
Watch the "human river" that has formed live:
"Tens of thousands" of displaced people, according to the civil protection, were prevented yesterday by the Israeli armed forces from returning to communities in the north through the so-called Netzarim corridor, which cuts the small coastal Palestinian area in two.
Israel justified its refusal to let them pass by citing that 27-year-old civilian Arbel Yehud had not been released and that it had not received a list of the status of the hostages who would be released.
But last night, Mr. Netanyahu's services announced that there had finally been progress in the indirect negotiations: Hamas would release three hostages on Thursday, including Arbel Yehud, and then three more on Saturday, February 1. "As part of these arrangements," Israel would "allow the passage of Gazans to the northern Gaza Strip from this morning (today, Monday)," Prime Minister Netanyahu's office added.
For its part, Hamas accused Israel earlier yesterday of "violating" the agreement by preventing the return of displaced people to the northern part of the enclave.
At the same time, Hamas, as well as the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, strongly criticized US President Donald Trump's proposal that the residents of the Gaza Strip go to Egypt and Jordan in order, according to him, to "populate" the enclave.
The US president compared the area to a "demolition site" the day before yesterday Saturday. "We're talking about a million and a half people, and we're just going to clean this whole thing up. You know, over the centuries, there's been many, many wars there. And now, I don't know, something has to be done," he continued.
Asked if he was referring to a long-term relocation of Gaza Strip citizens, Mr. Trump said, “It could be either one or the other.” He also said he had praised the Jordanian monarch for accepting Palestinian refugees and told him, “I would like you to welcome more,” as “Egypt would.”
For Palestinians, any attempt to drive them from their land harks back to the Nakba ("catastrophe" in Arabic), the mass displacements that followed the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.
"We say to Trump and to the whole world: we will not leave Palestine or Gaza no matter what," Rashad al-Nazi, displaced from Gaza City, told AFP.
The Palestinians "will wreck" Mr. Trump's proposal "just as they have thwarted all displacement plans (...) over decades," said Bassem Naim, a member of Hamas' political bureau, yesterday.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another armed movement, stressed that these statements encourage "war crimes and crimes against humanity" in the Gaza Strip.
Although an opponent of Hamas, which ousted the Palestinian Authority and took power in the Gaza Strip in 2007, Mahmoud Abbas condemned "any plan" to displace the enclave's population.
Both the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan — which hosts some 2,3 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants — and Egypt stressed yesterday that they reject "any forced displacement" of Palestinians.
The Arab League, for its part, warned against "attempts aimed at uprooting the Palestinians from their land," which "cannot" be characterized as anything other than "ethnic cleansing."
Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called Donald Trump's proposal an "excellent idea," assuring that Palestinians could secure a "new and beautiful life elsewhere."
The first phase of the ceasefire agreement, the second in 15 months of war, will last 42 days and is expected to allow the release of 33 Israeli hostages in exchange for the release of 1.904 Palestinians held in Israeli detention centers; the remaining Israeli hostages, both living and dead, are to be repatriated in the next two phases.
In the second exchange under the agreement, which came into effect on January 19, four Israeli female soldiers were released the day before yesterday in exchange for the release of approximately 200 Palestinians held in Israeli detention centers.
During the current phase, negotiations are expected to continue on the terms of the second phase, which will allow for the release of the last hostages and the definitive end of the war, before the third and longer phase, which will concern the repatriation of hostages who died in captivity or were already dead when they were transferred to the Palestinian enclave and the start of the reconstruction process.
The war was triggered by an unprecedented Hamas incursion into southern Israeli territory on October 7, 2023, resulting in the deaths of 1.210 people on the Israeli side, the majority of them civilians, according to an Agence France-Presse count based on official data.
Of the 251 people who were kidnapped, 87 hostages remain in the Gaza Strip, but 34 of them have been declared dead by the Israeli army.
Relatives of hostages who were kidnapped on October 7, 2023, but are not on the priority list for release, were outraged. “We want the agreement to continue and for the children to be brought back as soon as possible and all at once,” said Danny Miran, 79, whose son Omri is among the hostages.
In the Israeli large-scale military retaliatory operations in the Gaza Strip, which was placed under total siege, at least 47.306 people lost their lives, the majority of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas Health Ministry, which is considered reliable by the UN.
Although hostilities have ceased under the agreement, the death toll is rising daily, as civil protection recovers bodies from the rubble of buildings.
Source: protothema.gr
