Gaza

Last week, a ceasefire was announced after two years of genocide in Gaza. The bombs have stopped falling, but the devastation remains. The majority of homes, schools, hospitals, universities, factories, and commercial buildings have been reduced to rubble. From above, Gaza looks like a grey desert of rubble, its vibrant urban spaces reduced to ghost towns, its lush agricultural land and greenery wiped out.

The occupier’s aim was not only to render the Palestinians of Gaza homeless but also unable to provide for themselves. Uprooting the dispossessed and impoverished, those who have lost their connection to the land, is of course much easier.

This was the goal when Israeli tanks and bulldozers entered my family’s plot of land in the eastern part of Maghazi refugee camp and uprooted 55 olive trees, 10 palms and five fig trees.

This plot of land was offered to my refugee grandfather, Ali Alsaloul, by its original owner as a place to shelter in during the Nakba of 1948. Ali, his wife, Ghalia, and their children had just fled their village, al-Maghar, as Zionist forces advanced on it. Al-Maghar, like Gaza today, was reduced to rubble; the Zionists who perpetrated the crime completed the erasure by establishing a national park on its ruins – “Mrar Hills National Park”.

Ali was a farmer and so were his ancestors; his livelihood had always come from the land. So when he settled in the new location, he was quick to plant it with olive trees, palms, figs and prickly pears. He built his house there and raised my father, uncles and aunts. My grandfather eventually bought the land from its generous owner, by paying in installments over many years. Thus, my family came into the possession of 2,000 square metres (half an acre) of land.

Although my father and his siblings married and moved out of their family home, this plot of land remained a favourite place to go, especially for me.

It was just two kilometres away from our house in Maghazi refugee camp. I enjoyed doing the 30-minute walk, part of which went through a complete “jungle”: a stretch of green populated with clover, sycamore, jujube and olive trees, colourful birds, foxes, leashed and unleashed dogs and many beehives.

Every autumn, in October, when the olive picking season began, my cousins, friends and I would gather to collect the olives. It was an occasion that brought us closer together. We would get the olives pressed and get 500 litres (130 gallons) of olive oil from the harvest. The figs and dates were made into jams to have for breakfast or for suhoor during Ramadan.

The rest of the year, I would often meet my friends Ibrahim and Mohammed between the olive trees. We would light a small fire and make a kettle of tea to enjoy under the moonlight, while we talked.

When the war started in 2023, our land became a dangerous place to go. The farms and olive groves around it were often bombed. Our plot was also hit twice at the beginning of the war. As a result, we could not harvest the olives in 2023 and then again in 2024.

When the famine took hold of Gaza in the summer, we started sneaking into the plot to get some fruit and some firewood for cooking, since a kilo of that cost $2. We knew that Israeli tanks might storm in at any moment, but we took the risk anyway.

Seven families – we, friends and neighbours – benefited from the fruit and wood of that land.

One day in late August, a friend of mine called me with a terrible rumour he had heard: the Israeli tanks and bulldozers had advanced into the eastern part of Maghazi and levelled it all, uprooting trees and burying them. I gasped; our lifeline was gone.

Days later, the rumour was confirmed. The Israeli army had uprooted more than 600 trees in the area, mostly olive trees. Those who had fled from the area shared what they had seen. What was once a lush green stretch of land had been bulldozed into a yellow, lifeless desert.

Earlier in August, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reported that 98.5 percent of Gaza’s agricultural land had been damaged or made inaccessible. I guess the destruction of our plot shrank that 1.5 percent remaining land even further.

As Israel was completing the erasure of Palestinian agricultural land, it started allowing commercial but not aid trucks into Gaza. The markets were flooded with products with packaging covered in Hebrew.

Israel was starving us, destroying our ability to grow our own food, and then making us buy their products at exorbitant prices.

Ninety percent of people in Gaza are unemployed and can’t afford to buy an Israeli egg for $5 or a kilo of dates for $13. It was yet another genocidal strategy that forced the two million starving Palestinians in Gaza to choose between two horrible options: dying from hunger or paying to support the Israeli economy.

Now, aid is finally supposed to start coming into Gaza under the ceasefire agreement. This may be a relief to many starving Palestinians, but it is not a solution. Israel has rendered us fully dependent on aid, and it is the sole power that determines if, when and how much of it enters Gaza. Per the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, 100 percent of Palestinians in Gaza experience some level of food insecurity.

Much of Gaza’s agricultural land remains out of reach, as Israel has withdrawn from just a part of the Gaza Strip. My family will have to wait for the implementation of the third phase of the ceasefire deal – if Israel agrees to implement it at all – to see the Israeli army withdraw to the buffer zone and regain access our land.

We have now lost our land twice. Once in 1948 and now again in 2025. Israel wants to repeat history and dispossess us again. It must not be allowed to convert more Palestinian land into buffer zones and national parks.

Getting back our land, rehabilitating and planting it is crucial not just for our survival, but also for maintaining our connection to the land. We must resist uprooting.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Families of many of the Palestinian prisoners being released by Israel under an exchange deal say their long-awaited freedom is bittersweet after they learned their loved ones would be deported to third countries.

At least 154 Palestinian prisoners being freed on Monday as part of the swap for Israeli captives held in Gaza will be forced into exile by Israel, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Media Office said.

Those to be deported are among a larger group of Palestinians being released by Israel – 250 people held in Israeli prisons along with about 1,700 Palestinians seized from the Gaza Strip during two years of Israel’s war, many of whom were “forcibly disappeared”, according to the United Nations. For its part, Hamas and other Palestinian groups released 20 Israeli captives under a Gaza ceasefire agreement.

There are no details yet about where the freed Palestinians will be sent, but in a previous prisoner release in January, dozens of detainees were deported to countries in the region, including Tunisia, Algeria and Turkiye.

Observers said the forced exile illegally breaches the citizenship rights of the released prisoners and is a demonstration of the double standards surrounding the exchange deals.

“It goes without saying it’s illegal,” Tamer Qarmout, associate professor in public policy at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, told Al Jazeera.

“It is illegal because these are citizens of Palestine. They have no other citizenships. They’re out of a small prison, but they’re sent to a bigger prison, away from their society, to new countries in which they will face major restrictions. It’s inhumane.”

Families shocked by deportations

Speaking to Al Jazeera in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, relatives of Palestinian prisoner Muhammad Imran said they were shocked to learn he was among those Israel had decided to force into exile.

Raed Imran said the family had previously received a call from an Israeli intelligence officer, confirming that his brother, 43, would be released home and asking where he would stay on his release.

But on Monday, the family was dismayed to learn that Muhammad, who was arrested in December 2022 and sentenced to 13 life terms, would be deported.

“Today’s news was a shock, but we are still waiting. Maybe we’ll get to see him somehow,” Imran said. “What matters is that he is released, here or abroad.”

The exile means his family might be unable to travel overseas to meet him due to Israel’s control of the borders.

“We might be looking at families who will be seeing their loved ones deported and exiled out of Palestine but have no way of seeing them,” said Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, who has reported extensively from the occupied West Bank.

‘A win-win for Israel’

According to Qarmout, the deportations are intended to deprive Hamas and other Palestinian groups of being able to claim any symbolic win from the exchange and to remove the deported prisoners from any involvement in political or other activities.

“Exile means the end of their political future,” he said. “In the countries they go to, they will face extreme constraints, so they will not be able to be active in any front related to the conflict.”

He said the deportations amounted to forcible displacement of the released prisoners and collective punishment for their families, who would either be separated from their exiled loved ones or forced to leave their homeland if they were permitted by Israel to travel to join them.

“It’s a win-win for Israel,” he said, contrasting their experiences to those of the released Israeli captives, who will be able to resume their lives in Israel.

“It’s more double standards and hypocrisy,” he said.

Additional reporting by Mosab Shawer in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank

US President Donald Trump wrote of a ‘new beginning’ as he signed a visitor book at Israel’s parliament, ahead of a speech there on the Gaza peace deal and the freeing of Israeli captives.

Israeli officials have confirmed that all 20 living captives have been released in Gaza. Under the terms of Donald Trump’s 20-point plan, this should trigger the release of almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.

Cheering broke out among in Tel Aviv it was announced that Hamas had released seven Israeli captives into the custody of the Red Cross, the first to be released as part of the Gaza ceasefire deal.

US envoy Steve Witkoff and members of President Donald Trump’s family spoke to nearly half a million people in Tel Aviv who had gathered to celebrate the imminent return of Israeli captives. The crowd booed every time Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was mentioned, who they blame for prolonging the war.

In a shifting world order, New Zealand’s foreign policy faces new tests, from Gaza to the Pacific.
Foreign Minister Winston Peters speaks to Talk to Al Jazeera about why his government has stopped short of recognising a Palestinian state, how small nations can stay neutral amid the United States-China rivalry, and whether multilateralism still protects the weak from the will of the powerful.

Oxfam’s Chris McIntosh explains Israel’s war on Gaza has left Palestinians there with little purchasing power, as aid trucks remain stalled at the border despite a ceasefire.

Families in Palestine and Israel await the return of their loved ones as the Israeli-Hamas truce continues to hold.

Israel says it expects to receive all its remaining living captives from Gaza early on Monday, a key step in the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas now in effect.

Speaking on Sunday, government spokeswoman Shosh Bedrosian said that Israel anticipates all 20 living captives will be returned together early on Monday.

As in previous exchanges during Israel’s two-year war on Gaza, the captives will first be handed over to the Red Cross, which will transport them to an Israeli military base inside Gaza for initial medical checks before they proceed to Israel to reunite with their families.

A Hamas source told Al Jazeera Arabic that the captives have been moved to three locations in the enclave ahead of their transfer to Red Cross officials.

Once Israel has confirmed all its captives are inside Israeli territory, it will begin releasing Palestinian prisoners, Bedrosian said.

Under the terms of the ceasefire, Israel is to release about 2,000 Palestinians it holds in detention, many without charge. The prisoners include 250 Palestinians serving life sentences. Imprisoned Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti, whose release Palestinians have long sought, will not be among them, Israel has said.

Some detainees will be released in the occupied West Bank, where relatives have been instructed by Israel not to hold celebrations or speak to the media.

Israel is also preparing to receive the bodies of 28 captives confirmed to have died in captivity, according to Bedrosian.

Speaking in a televised address on Sunday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hoped the captives’ release would be a moment of unity for the country, despite controversy over his handling of the war.

“This is an emotional evening … because tomorrow, our children will return to our borders,” said Netanyahu, quoting a biblical verse. “Tomorrow is the beginning of a new path – a path of rebuilding, a path of healing and, I hope, a path of united hearts.”

Some of the families of captives have criticised Netanyahu for allegedly prioritising military victory over their release. On Saturday, when the US envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, praised Netanyahu’s leadership at a rally in Tel Aviv, many in the crowd booed.

‘Trump’s show’

The planned exchange comes three days after Israel’s government approved the first phase of a deal aimed at ending the war in Gaza, and just as United States President Donald Trump, who spearheaded the agreement, visits Israel before a summit in Egypt.

Trump left for Israel from the Joint Base Andrews near Washington on Sunday afternoon, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and CIA chief John Ratcliffe accompanying him on Air Force One.

“This is going to be a very special time,” said Trump on Sunday afternoon before boarding the flight. “Everybody’s cheering.”

On board Air Force One, the US president told reporters that the captives may be released “a little early”, that his relationship with Netanyahu was good, and that Qatar deserved credit for the role it had played in mediating the ceasefire.

“The war is over. You understand that,” Trump added.

Al Jazeera’s correspondent Nour Odeh, reporting from Amman, Jordan, because the network is banned in Israel, said: “It is Trump’s show.”

“He will be arriving in Israel, meeting with the families of captives, addressing the Knesset, and then going to Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh, where he has summoned the leaders of more than 20 countries.”

As part of the Trump-led ceasefire agreement, Israeli forces have withdrawn from parts of Gaza, including Gaza City and other northern areas, although they still control more than half of its territory.

Palestinians returning to the combat zones they were displaced from have found widespread devastation, or “wastelands” where their neighbourhoods once stood, Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim al-Khalili reported from Gaza City.

Humanitarian aid has begun to trickle into the enclave as part of the ceasefire, with dozens of trucks arriving on Sunday. But distribution remains slow for a population that has endured months of extreme deprivation, said Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary.

“People are not waiting only for food, but also for tents, mobile shelters, solar panels and desperately-needed medical equipment and medicines – items largely unavailable for the past two years,” Khoudary said from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza. “Most people have lost their savings, have no access to bank accounts, and are completely dependent on humanitarian aid to survive.”

Leaders to convene in Egypt

The Gaza summit, scheduled for Monday in Sharm el-Sheikh, will be co-chaired by Trump and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

More than a dozen world leaders are expected to attend, including United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi said that neither he nor Iran’s president would accept an invitation to the summit because they could not “engage with counterparts who have attacked the Iranian People”, in reference to the US and its strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities earlier this year.

Although both Israel and Hamas said they would not participate, Cairo has hailed the summit as a “historic” event that will seek “to end the war in the Gaza Strip, enhance efforts to achieve peace and stability in the Middle East”.

Egypt said that a “document ending the war in the Gaza Strip” is also expected to be signed at the summit.

‘Hard work’ to come

Despite the ceasefire progress, many details on phase two of the deal, which is still to be negotiated, need to be ironed out, including the exact makeup of a post-war administration for Gaza and the fate of Hamas.

The second phase is expected to involve a phased Israeli withdrawal, Hamas’s disarmament, the establishment of new security and governance arrangements, and reconstruction.

“After the big day tomorrow for Trump, after the release of the hostages… then comes the hard work,” Adnan Hayajneh, professor of international relations at the University of Qatar, told Al Jazeera. “If you look at the situation in Gaza, it’s like an earthquake happened… There’s no government. There’s no schools. There’s nothing there.”

US Vice President JD Vance appeared to acknowledge on Sunday that the road to stability would be difficult. “It is going to take consistent leverage and consistent pressure from the president of the United States on down,” he told US broadcaster CBS.

In a separate interview with ABC, Vance said that the 200 US troops reportedly being sent to Israel to monitor the ceasefire are not intended to have a combat role and will not deploy to Palestinian territory.

“The idea that we’re going to have troops on the ground in Gaza, in Israel, that that is not our intention, that is not our plan,” said Vance.

Sources say the 28-year-old was killed by members of an Israel-linked ‘militia’ fighting Hamas in the Sabra neighbourhood.

Palestinian journalist Saleh Aljafarawi has been killed during clashes in Gaza City, just days after Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian sources told Al Jazeera Arabic that the 28-year-old, who had gained prominence for his videos covering the war, was shot and killed by members of an “armed militia” while covering clashes in the city’s Sabra neighbourhood.

Al Jazeera’s Sanad agency verified footage published by reporters and activists showing his body – in a “press” flak jacket – on what appeared to be the back of a truck. He had been missing since Sunday morning.

Palestinian sources said clashes were taking place between Hamas security forces and fighters from the Doghmush clan in Sabra on Sunday, although this has not been confirmed by local authorities.

A senior source in Gaza’s Ministry of Interior told Al Jazeera Arabic that the clashes in Gaza City involved “an armed militia affiliated with the [Israeli] occupation”.

The source said security forces imposed a siege on the militia, adding that “militia members” killed displaced people as they were returning from southern Gaza to Gaza City.

Despite the recent ceasefire, local authorities have repeatedly warned that the security situation in Gaza remains challenging.

‘I lived in fear for every second’

Speaking to Al Jazeera in January, several days before the start of a temporary ceasefire in the war at the time, Aljafarawi talked about his experiences being displaced from northern Gaza.

“All the scenes and situations I went through during these 467 days will not be erased from my memory. All the situations we faced, we will never be able to forget them,” Aljafarawi said.

The journalist added that he had received numerous threats from Israel due to his work.

“Honestly, I lived in fear for every second, especially after hearing what the Israeli occupation was saying about me. I was living life second to second, not knowing what the next second would bring,” he said.

In the deadliest-ever conflict for journalists, more than 270 media workers have now been killed in Gaza since the start of Israel’s war in October 2023.

Aljafarawi’s death comes as the current ceasefire in Gaza has held for a third day, ahead of an expected hostage-prisoner exchange.

United States President Donald Trump is set to gather with other world leaders on Monday in Egypt’s Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh for a Gaza summit co-hosted by Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

It aims “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 and stability”, according to the Egyptian president’s office.

During the “historic” gathering, a “document ending the war in the Gaza Strip” is set to be signed, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said on Sunday. Neither Israel nor Hamas will have representatives at the talks.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians are held in Israeli jails – most of them without charge.

And as the ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel is centred on the release of detainees, about 2,000 of them are due to be released.

But the mistreatment of detainees by Israeli forces has been documented for decades.

So in addition to international law, is Israel breaking its own laws in its arrest and treatment of prisoners? Why did it arrest and torture so many people during its war on Gaza? And is it using mass detention to maintain its occupation?

Presenter: Neave Barker

Guests:

Naji Abbas – Director of the Prisoners & Detainees Department at Physicians for Human Rights-Israel

Ubai Aboudi – Executive director at Bisan Center for Research and Development, held in administrative detention in Israel without trial

Milena Ansari – Israel and Palestine assistant researcher at Human Rights Watch

From deadly antigovernment protests in Madagascar to military parades celebrating the 80th founding anniversary of the Workers’ Party of Korea in Pyongyang, here is a look at the week in photos.

Yousef Birzeit, an economics professor at Birzeit University, says the cost to rebuild Gaza will be far greater than the UN, European Union and World Bank estimate of about $50bn.

Norwegian riot police used pepper spray to disperse a pro-Palestinian protest outside a World Cup qualifier match between Norway and Israel, which the hosts won 5-0. Several activists were arrested.

Preparations are also under way for a Gaza summit in Egypt, with US President Donald Trump expected to attend.

Oct. 11 (UPI) — A cease-fire remains in effect in Gaza, where aid is flowing while Israel prepares to receive 48 released hostages, only 20 of whom are thought to be alive.

U.N. officials said medical supplies, fuel and other needed materials are flowing into Gaza once again as the fighting has stopped ahead of a proposed permanent peace, NBC News reported.

The Israeli military also has withdrawn to a predetermined line, which has started the 72-hour countdown for Hamas to release the remaining 48 hostages, including the remains of an estimated 28 hostages who are believed to be dead, U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff announced.

No hostilities are underway in Gaza, which has enabled its remaining residents to begin returning to their former homes, many of which have been decimated during two years of war that started when Hamas launched an unprovoked attack on Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023.

Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants killed some 1,200 Israeli civilians and others and kidnapped another 250, but released more than 100 during a prior cease-fire.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians are returning to cities and villages that largely have been destroyed, according to Al Jazeera.

Israel has agreed to release nearly 250 Palestinian prisoners and has begun notifying the families of those who were killed by the prisoners that Israel will release.

Israel’s partial withdrawal from Gaza and the exchange of remaining hostages held in Gaza and prisoners held in Israel are part of the first phase of the peace agreement between Israel and Hamas.

Israeli officials expect to begin receiving the living hostages and the remains of those who are deceased on Monday.

While the first phase of the peace agreement is underway, leaders of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine have rejected any potential foreign nations acting as peacekeepers in Gaza, though.

The United States is among the nations that are tasked with helping to maintain the peace in Gaza.

Gazan officials also are demanding an independent investigation of alleged Israeli war crimes and genocide against Gazans.

The demand comes after the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry reported about 67,000 Gazans died and 170,000 were injured during the two-year conflict.

The Health Ministry’s numbers do not differentiate between Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters and civilians, and the number of reported casualties has been disputed.

Ukraine’s president praises Trump’s efforts to secure Gaza ceasefire, says other wars ‘can be stopped as well’.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged Donald Trump to broker peace in Ukraine like in “the Middle East” during a phone call, saying if the United States president could stop one war, “others can be stopped as well.”

Saturday’s call came a day after Russia launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine’s energy grid, knocking out power to parts of the capital, Kyiv, and nine other Ukrainian regions, which have since been restored.

Diplomatic efforts to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have slowed in recent weeks, in part because global attention has shifted to brokering a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza, Kyiv said.

Trump, who announced the first phase of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas on Wednesday, met Russian President Vladimir Putin for talks in August but failed to secure progress on a ceasefire in the European war.

“I had a call with US President Donald Trump. A very positive and productive one,” Zelenskyy said on Facebook, congratulating Trump for his “outstanding” ceasefire plan in the Middle East.

“If a war can be stopped in one region, then surely other wars can be stopped as well, including the Russian war,” Zelenskyy added, calling for Trump to pressure the Kremlin into negotiations.

Relations between the two leaders have warmed dramatically since February when they sparred during a televised meeting at the White House.

Trump has since grown more hostile towards Moscow while expressing sympathy for Ukraine.

In September, he wrote on Truth Social that Kyiv should try to “take back” all its occupied territory with Europe’s and NATO’s help.

US first lady Melania Trump said on Friday that she had secured the release of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia after establishing an extraordinary back channel of communication with Putin.

Russian attacks on Ukraine killed at least five people on Saturday and cut power to parts of southern Ukraine’s Odesa region, according to Ukrainian officials.

Two of the people died inside a church in Kostyantynivka when it was hit by a strike, according to local authorities.

Using ‘Russian assets’

Ukraine’s largest private energy company, DTEK, said “the main work to restore the power supply” was completed but some localised outages were still affecting the Ukrainian capital after Friday’s “massive” Russian attacks.

Ukrainian drone attacks, meanwhile, killed two people in Russia, according to regional officials.

In the Russian border region of Belgorod, a truck driver was killed by a Ukrainian strike, according to local officials.

Moscow has targeted Ukraine’s energy grid each winter since it launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, cutting power and heating to millions of households and disrupting water supplies in what Kyiv says is a brazen war crime.

Russia denies targeting civilians and says Ukraine uses the energy sites to power its military sector.

Both countries have accused each other in recent months of frustrating progress towards a peace deal.

Russia blames Kyiv and its European allies for the impasse, accusing them of undermining peace negotiations with Washington. Ukraine and Europe accuse Russia of playing for time so it can seize more Ukrainian territory.

Zelenskyy said in his nightly address on Friday that Russia was taking advantage of the world being “almost entirely focused on the prospect of establishing peace in the Middle East” and called for strengthening Ukraine’s air defence systems and placing tighter sanctions on Russia.

“Russian assets must be fully used to strengthen our defence and ensure recovery,” he said in the video, posted to X.

Donald Trump and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi will chair an international summit to discuss the US president’s proposal to end Israel’s war on Gaza in Sharm el-Sheikh on Monday.

The meeting will involve leaders from more than 20 countries, the Egyptian presidency said in a statement on Saturday.

It 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 and stability”, the statement said.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer said they would attend, along with Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Pedro Sanchez of Spain. French President Emmanuel Macron has also confirmed his attendance.

It was not immediately clear whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or any representatives of the Hamas Palestinian group, would attend.

The announcement comes as tens of thousands of Palestinians streamed north along the coast of Gaza, by foot, car and cart back, to their abandoned and mostly destroyed homes in the Strip, as a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas appeared to be holding.

Israeli troops partially pulled back under the first phase of a US-brokered agreement reached this week to end Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed more than 67,000 people and left much of the famine-struck enclave in ruins.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said that the ceasefire “ended one form of violence, but the struggle continues”.

“People walk this exhausting, tiring journey back here [in the north] because they belong here. They keep telling us that they belong to this part of the Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip, and they will never be uprooted from here,” Mahmoud said.

“But spending a night here is going to be very difficult,” he said. “The struggle to survive continues to present itself in the most aggressive way, not each day but each hour.”

Gaza’s Government Media Office has said that 5,000 public operations have been carried out after the ceasefire came into force to improve the lives of Palestinians in the enclave.

Among them are more than 850 rescue and relief missions carried out by the Gaza Civil Defence, police and municipal teams to recover bodies, remove rubble and secure destroyed areas.

About 150 bodies have been recovered from various areas across the enclave since Friday morning, the Civil Defence said. Separately, Nasser Hospital reported that 28 bodies were recovered from southern Gaza’s Khan Younis alone.

More than 900 service missions to restore water and sewage lines have also been carried out, the agency added.

These missions are being carried out with the bare minimum of resources as Israel’s blockade on Gaza remains in place, restricting the entry of fuel and equipment. During the genocide, Israeli attacks destroyed ambulances, fire trucks and civil defence centres, further crippling emergency and recovery efforts across the enclave.

The mayor of Khan Younis said that 85 percent of the southern Gaza governorate has been destroyed by Israeli attacks, adding that about 400,000 tonnes of rubble must be removed from the city’s streets.

Calls for crossings to open

Aid groups have also urged Israel to reopen more crossings to allow aid into Gaza.

The World Food Programme (WFP) said it was ready to restore 145 food distribution points across the territory, once Israel allows for expanded deliveries. Before Israel completely sealed off Gaza in March, United Nations agencies provided food at 400 distribution points.

“What is most important now for us to reach the north is crossings to be opened,” Antoine Renard, a WFP representative and the country director for Palestine, told Al Jazeera from Deir el-Balah.

He explained that in a previous ceasefire in January, the WFP had enabled “practically a third of all the different goods that managed to enter into Gaza”.

“The conditions should be the same 1760225956. We expect that the good practices that we had in January 2025 will be again applied in this ceasefire,” Renard said.

Izzat al-Risheq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said the group is working with “friendly countries” to ensure the entry of aid into Gaza, “despite the massive destruction caused by the war”.

UNICEF spokesperson Tess Ingram said on Saturday that the children’s agency expects to significantly scale up supplies of high-energy food for malnourished children, menstrual hygiene supplies and tents, starting on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Israeli captives held in Gaza by Hamas and other armed groups are expected to “come back” on Monday, US President Trump said, with 20 living captives and the bodies of 28 others due to be handed over as part of the ceasefire deal.

In exchange, Israel is due to release some 250 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, as well as about 1,700 people detained from Gaza over the past two years of war and held without charge. The Israel Prison Service said that detainees have been transferred to deportation facilities at Ofer and Ktzi’ot prisons, “awaiting instructions from the political echelon”.

In past exchanges, Israel has delayed the release of Palestinian prisoners and subjected them to harsh treatment, including physical abuse, humiliation and restrictions on family contact, before eventually releasing them. Rights groups have documented numerous cases of Palestinians arriving in dire health conditions after prolonged interrogation and detention without charge or trial.

In Tel Aviv, tens of thousands of people gathered in Hostages Square after two years of protests led by family members of captives calling for their return.

Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his daughter, Ivanka Trump, took the stage in the square with the US Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, who played a key role in the ceasefire negotiations.

“I dreamed of this night. It’s been a long journey,” Witkoff said. Some yelled, “Thank you, Trump, thank you Witkoff”, and booed when the envoy mentioned Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Turning to the captives, Witkoff said: “As you return to the embrace of your families and your nation, know that all of Israel and the entire world stands ready to welcome you home with open arms and endless love.”

Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut said that Israeli captives’ families credit Trump for the deal, not Netanyahu.

“The family members of captives have no faith in their government, no faith in the Israeli prime minister, whom they accused of prolonging the war for his own personal and political gain,” Salhut said.

“The cheers for [Trump] and for Steve Witkoff come because the family members and those who are protesting say this happened because of the Americans.”