PALESTINIANS BEGAN RETURNING to the north of Gaza today after Israel and Hamas said they had reached a deal for the release of another six hostages.

The breakthrough preserves a fragile ceasefire in the war, which has devastated Gaza and displaced nearly all its residents, paving the way for more hostage-prisoner swaps under an agreement aimed at ending the more than 15-month conflict.

Israel had been preventing Palestinians from returning to their homes in northern Gaza, accusing Hamas of violating the truce by failing to release civilian women hostages.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said earlier that a deal had been reached for the release of three hostages on Thursday and another three on Saturday.

Hamas confirmed the agreement in its own statement today.

Dozens of Palestinians began making their way north this morning, an official at Gaza’s Interior Ministry told AFP.

Israel had said it would prevent Palestinians’ passage until the release of Arbel Yehud, a civilian woman hostage. She is among those slated for return on Thursday, according to Netanyahu’s office.

Hamas said that blocking returns to the north also amounted to a truce violation, adding it had provided “all the necessary guarantees” for Yehud’s release.

Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee said Monday that residents would be allowed to return on foot starting at 7am (5am GMT) and by car at 9am. 

“The passage of displaced Palestinians has begun”, the official said.

Palestinian leaders meanwhile slammed a plan floated by US President Donald Trump to “clean out” Gaza, vowing to resist any effort to forcibly displace residents of the war-battered territory.

Trump said Gaza had become a “demolition site”, adding he had spoken to Jordan’s King Abdullah II about moving Palestinians out.

“I’d like Egypt to take people. And I’d like Jordan to take people,” Trump told reporters.

Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas, who is based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, “expressed strong rejection and condemnation of any projects” aimed at displacing Palestinians from Gaza, his office said.

Bassem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, told AFP that Palestinians would “foil such projects”, as they have done to similar plans “for displacement and alternative homelands over the decades”.

Islamic Jihad, which has fought alongside Hamas in Gaza, called Trump’s idea “deplorable”.

For Palestinians, any attempt to move them from Gaza would evoke dark memories of what the Arab world calls the “Nakba”, or catastrophe — the mass displacement of Palestinians during Israel’s creation in 1948.

“We say to Trump and the whole world: we will not leave Palestine or Gaza, no matter what happens,” said displaced Gaza resident Rashad al-Naji.

Trump floated the idea to reporters Saturday aboard Air Force One: “You’re talking about probably a million and half people, and we just clean out that whole thing.”

Moving Gaza’s roughly 2.4 million inhabitants could be done “temporarily or could be long term”, he said.

Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich — who opposed the truce deal and has voiced support for re-establishing Israeli settlements in Gaza — called Trump’s suggestion of “a great idea”.

The Arab League rejected the idea, warning against “attempts to uproot the Palestinian people from their land”.

“The forced displacement and eviction of people from their land can only be called ethnic cleansing”, the league said in a statement.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said “our rejection of the displacement of Palestinians is firm and will not change. Jordan is for Jordanians and Palestine is for Palestinians.”

Egypt’s foreign ministry said it rejected any infringement of Palestinians’ “inalienable rights”.

© AFP 2025