Tens of thousands of Palestinians streamed along the main roads leading north in Gaza on Monday, jubilant to be returning home after months of living in temporary shelter but fearing what might remain of their homes amid the bombed-out ruins.
Lebanese Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said on Monday that the group would not accept any justifications to extend the period for Israeli troops’ withdrawal from southern Lebanon.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has withdrawn a threat to quit the government if Israel does not return to fighting in Gaza, several Israeli news sites reported on Monday.
Gaza residents stream home after hostage breakthrough
Tens of thousands of Palestinians streamed along the main roads leading north in Gaza on Monday, jubilant to be returning home after months of living in temporary shelter but fearing what might remain of their homes amid the bombed-out ruins.
Their return, which had been delayed at the weekend, went ahead after Hamas agreed to hand over three Israeli hostages later this week and Israeli forces began to withdraw from a main corridor across the enclave under the terms of an agreement on a ceasefire in the 15-month-long war.
In Israel, families of hostages waited anxiously for news of the fate of their loved ones.
Along a road running by Gaza’s Mediterranean shore, a mass of people, some holding infants in their arms or carrying bundles of belongings on their shoulders, trekked north on foot.
“It’s like I was born again and we were victorious again,” said a Palestinian mother, Umm Mohammed Ali, part of the kilometres-long throng that moved slowly up the coastal road.
Witnesses said the first residents arrived in Gaza City in the early morning after the first crossing point in central Gaza opened at 7am. Another crossing opened around three hours later, letting in vehicles.
“My heart is beating, I thought I would never come back,” said Osama (50), a public servant and father of five, as he arrived in Gaza City.
Having been repeatedly displaced over 15 months of war, cheers erupted at shelters and tent encampments when families heard the news that the crossings would be opened.
Around 650,000 Palestinians were displaced from northern Gaza during the war, which was triggered by Hamas’ 7 October 2023 assault on southern Israel in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies. More than 47,000 Palestinians have since been killed in the Israeli assault on Gaza, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Later on Monday, Gaza’s Hamas authorities said more than 300,000 people had crossed into Gaza City and the north edge of the enclave.
Many of those displaced have had to move several times as Israel designated parts of Gaza as humanitarian zones and then cleared them out before mounting bombardments and ground operations there.
Much of Gaza now lies in ruins. The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said returnees to the north need at least 135,000 tents and shelters as they try to reestablish their lives in the rubble-strewn landscape of their former homes.
Under the terms of the ceasefire agreement, residents of northern Gaza were due to return at the weekend. But Israel said that Hamas had broken the deal by failing to release civilian female hostage Arbel Yehud and kept its forces in the Netzarim corridor that cuts across the enclave south of Gaza City.
Late on Sunday, Qatari mediators resolved the dispute after Hamas agreed to release Yehud, along with female soldier Agam Berger and another hostage on Thursday, two days before the next scheduled release of three more hostages on Saturday. Israel then gave the green light for a return to north Gaza from Monday morning.
The armed wing of the Islamic Jihad group, an ally of Hamas, published a video on Monday showing Yehud alive.
Hamas has also provided a list of all hostages to be released during the first six-week phase of the ceasefire agreement, stating their condition.
On Monday, a Hamas official told Reuters the group had handed over to mediators a list that showed that 25 of 33 hostages scheduled for release in the first phase are alive. The figure of 25 included the seven hostages released since the truce began on 19 January.
Israel has confirmed the Hamas figures in the list — 25 are alive but eight were killed by Hamas, said an Israeli government spokesman.
The identities of who was dead and who was alive were not immediately confirmed, keeping families in a state of hope and dread.
While for some in Gaza there is joy at seeing what might remain of their homes in the north, for some Israelis their return evokes fears of another possible Hamas attack.
After 15 months of war, the sight of columns of people on foot or in vehicles along the main roads leading north left some Israelis in nearby communities worried for the future.
Sderot, in sight of Gaza, was one of a string of communities attacked on 7 October 2023 by Hamas militants and other gunmen.
“I live with my family right there, and the terrorists were on the street. We were locked inside the house, and where did they come from? From northern Gaza,” said 48-year-old A. Ben-Dayian, whose brother was killed in the attack.
“So now we are back to the same situation more or less, we have loads of Gazans and within them loads of terrorists.”
No extension for Israeli troop withdrawal, says Hezbollah
Lebanese Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said on Monday that the group would not accept any justifications to extend the period for Israeli troops’ withdrawal from southern Lebanon.
“What comes after the period given for Israel’s withdrawal? Israel has to withdraw because the 60 days are over. We do not accept any justification to extend for one moment or one day,” he said in a recorded televised address.
Israel said on Friday that its army’s withdrawal would last beyond the 60 days stipulated in the ceasefire agreement with the Lebanese group, saying the terms of the deal had not been fully enforced by the Lebanese state.
The US said on Sunday the agreement between Lebanon and Israel would remain in effect until 18 February, an extension to the 26 January deadline previously agreed.
Qassem said in his speech that the group received information that Washington initially proposed to Lebanese officials to extend the deal to 28 February, which he said they rejected.
Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said during a meeting with US Ambassador Lisa Johnson that the country accepted adhering to the ceasefire agreement with Israel until 18 February.
Mikati said that required pressure to end the Israeli “aggression and repeated violations” and to secure Israel’s complete withdrawal from the occupied territories in the south, in return, his office said in a statement on Monday.
“Nobody in Lebanon can accept the extension [of Israeli troops withdrawal] for one moment. Israel must get out,” said Qassem.
Israeli forces killed at least 24 people and wounded at least 141 others in southern Lebanon on Sunday and Monday, said the Lebanese health ministry, as thousands of people tried to return to their homes in the area in defiance of Israeli military orders.
Israel finance minister withdraws threat to quit coalition
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has withdrawn a threat to quit the government if Israel does not return to fighting in Gaza, several Israeli news sites reported on Monday.
Earlier this month, Smotrich opposed a ceasefire deal that aims to secure the release of nearly 100 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli jails, arguing it endangered Israeli security and stopped Israel from achieving its war goals.
Hardline National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and two other ministers from his nationalist-religious party resigned from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet over the deal.
Smotrich stopped short of resigning but said if Israel agreed to a full end to the war before achieving its aims in Gaza — which include the destruction of Hamas — he and his party, Religious Zionism, would also leave the coalition.
Netanyahu asked Smotrich to stay in the coalition to keep the right-wing government intact and the finance minister agreed, Israel’s Yediot reported on Monday.
EU ministers agree to revive Rafah border mission
The European Union would restart a civilian mission to monitor the border crossing between Gaza and Egypt at Rafah, said the bloc’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, on Monday.
Kallas said there was broad agreement that the European Union Border Assistance Mission could play “a decisive role in supporting the ceasefire”.
“Today, EU Foreign Ministers agreed to redeploy it to the Rafah Crossing Point between Gaza and Egypt. This will allow a number of injured individuals to leave Gaza and receive medical care,” she added.
A civilian EU mission to help monitor the Rafah crossing was agreed to in 2005 but suspended in June 2007 as a result of Hamas’ takeover of the Gaza Strip.
In its standby mode, the mission has 10 international and eight local staff.
Italy’s foreign and defence ministries said on Monday that Rome would send seven Carabinieri officers to join the Rafah mission in addition to two Italians already there.
The mission’s primary objective “is to coordinate and facilitate the daily transit of up to 300 injured and ill individuals, ensuring assistance and protection for vulnerable people in a humanitarian emergency context,” said the Italian ministries.
“Italy will also be responsible for transporting the entire contingent of the European Gendarmerie Force to the theatre of operations,” they said, adding that Spanish Guardia Civil officers and French gendarmes would join the international force.
Israeli airstrike kills two in West Bank
An Israeli airstrike killed two Palestinian militants in the city of Tulkarm on Monday, said Hamas, underscoring Israel’s renewed focus on armed groups in the occupied West Bank since the start of the ceasefire in Gaza.
Hamas said the two killed on Monday were members of its armed wing. Witnesses in the city said a raid was under way.
The Israeli military said it struck a militant who served as Hamas’ leader in Tulkarm, which it said was behind numerous attacks against Israelis, and that it killed an additional militant.
In Jenin, further north, a major operation with hundreds of Israeli troops backed by armoured vehicles, drones and helicopters, looked set to go into a second week, with smoke rising above the refugee camp adjacent to the city, a longtime centre of armed militant groups.
Armoured bulldozers and diggers have destroyed buildings and roads in the camp, a crowded township built for descendants of Palestinians who fled or were forced from their homes in the 1948 war around the creation of the state of Israel, and thousands of people have left their homes.
At least 16 Palestinians have been killed in Jenin and surrounding areas since the start of the operation a week ago, including four claimed as fighters by Hamas and the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad.
Late on Saturday, Israeli forces also shot a two-year-old girl during a raid on the village of Ash-Shuhada, just to the south of Jenin, said Palestinian officials.
“They started to shoot at us through the windows without any warning,” said Ghada Asous, grandmother of two-year-old Laila Muhammad Al-Khatib. “All of a sudden, the special forces raided us and were shooting through the windows.”
The Israeli military (IDF) said troops on a counterterrorism operation had fired at a structure where suspected militants had barricaded themselves. It was reviewing reports that uninvolved civilians were injured, it said in a statement.
Gaza hostages were held in tunnels for months, says Israeli medical officer
Some of the hostages released from Gaza so far during the ceasefire had been held in Hamas tunnels for up to eight months straight, deprived of daylight and with little to no human contact, said an Israeli general on Monday.
Three Israeli civilians and four soldiers — all women — have been released so far in the ceasefire, which began on 19 January. In return, Israel has released 290 Palestinian convicts and detainees.
“Some of them told us that they’ve been in the past few months, that they’ve been through the entire time, in tunnels, underground,” deputy chief of the Israeli military’s medical corps, Colonel Dr Avi Banov, told journalists online.
“Some of them were alone through the entire time they were there,” he said. “Those who said they were together were in better shape.”
Auschwitz survivors warn of rising anti-Semitism
Auschwitz survivors warned of the dangers of rising anti-Semitism on Monday, as they marked the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi German death camp by Soviet troops in one of the last such gatherings of those who experienced its horrors.
The ceremony at the site of the camp, which Nazi Germany set up in occupied Poland during World War Two to murder European Jews on a huge scale, was attended by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Britain’s King Charles, French President Emmanuel Macron, Polish President Andrzej Duda and many other leaders.
They did not make speeches, but rather listened for perhaps the last time to those who suffered and witnessed first-hand one of humanity’s greatest atrocities.
Israel, founded for Jews in the shadow of the Holocaust, sent Education Minister Yoav Kisch.
“We see in the modern world today a great increase in anti-Semitism, and it was anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust,” said Marian Turski (98), who was sent to Auschwitz in 1944 and survived the westward “death march” to Buchenwald in 1945.
“Let’s not be afraid to convince ourselves that we can solve problems between neighbours.”
Retired physician Leon Weintraub (99), who was separated from his family and sent to Auschwitz in 1944, warned of the dangers of intolerance.
“I ask you to multiply your efforts to counteract the views whose effects we are commemorating today,” he said.
Author and academic Tova Friedman (86) said: “Eighty years after the liberation, the world is again in crisis. Our Jewish-Christian values have been overshadowed worldwide by prejudice, fear, suspicion and extremism and the rampant anti-Semitism that is spreading among the nations is shocking.”
Anti-Semitic incidents have surged in part along with protests against Israel in many parts of Europe, North America and Australia since Israel launched its assault on the Palestinian enclave of Gaza after attacks on Israel by Hamas militants on 7 October 2023.
More than 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, perished in gas chambers or from starvation, cold and disease at Auschwitz, where most had been brought in freight wagons, packed like livestock. DM
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