Israel lets Palestinians go back to northern Gaza for first time in over a year as cease-fire holds | Global News Avenue

Israel on Monday began allowing thousands of Palestinians to return to the devastated northern Gaza Strip for the first time since weeks before the conflict began. 15-month war with Hamas,according to A fragile ceasefire.

The opening ceremony was delayed by two days due to a dispute between Hamas and Israel, which said the militant group had changed the order of releasing hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. Mediators settled the dispute overnight.

Separately, Israeli troops in southern Lebanon on Sunday Shoot at protesters Lebanese health officials reported that at least 22 people were killed and 124 injured as they were asked to evacuate in accordance with the ceasefire agreement.

Hours later, the White House said Israel and Lebanon had agreed to extend the deadline for Israeli troops to leave southern Lebanon until February 18, after Israel demanded more time to withdraw its troops beyond the 60-day deadline stipulated in the ceasefire agreement. -Hezbollah war in late November.

Israel says it needs to stay longer because the Lebanese army has not yet deployed to all areas of southern Lebanon to ensure Hezbollah does not re-establish a presence in the area. The Lebanese army says it cannot deploy until Israeli troops withdraw.

Palestinians who have sheltered for more than a year in squalid tent camps and school-turned-shelters are eager to return to their homes, even though they know their homes may have been damaged or destroyed. Many fear Israel will send them into permanent flight and have expressed similar concerns about President Trump’s idea of ​​resettling large numbers of Palestinians in Egypt and Jordan.

Ismail Abu Matter, a father of four who waited three days to be reunited with his family, described joyous scenes across the river as people sang, prayed and reunited with loved ones. cry.

“This is the joy of return,” said Abu Maat, whose family was among hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled or were expelled from what is now Israel during the 1948 war over Israel’s creation. “We thought we wouldn’t come back like our ancestors.”

Hamas called the return “a victory for our people and a declaration of defeat and failure of the (Israeli) occupation and diversion plan.”

The ceasefire aims to end the deadliest and most destructive war ever between Israel and Hamas and ensure the release of dozens of hostages captured. Militant attack on October 7, 2023thus triggering a fight.

Israel ordered a complete withdrawal from the northern region early in the war and sealed off the area shortly after ground troops entered. In October 2023, about one million people fled to the south, while hundreds of thousands remained in the north, with some populations in the north affected. The fiercest fighting and heaviest destruction of the war.

Defense Minister Israel Katz said Israel will continue to enforce the ceasefire and that anyone who violates the ceasefire or threatens Israeli forces “will bear the full cost.”

“We will not allow a return to the reality of October 7,” he wrote on the X platform.

Israel delayed the planned opening of the border crossing over the weekend, saying it would not allow Palestinians to go north until female civilian hostage Abel Yehud was freed. It also accused Hamas of failing to provide information on whether the remaining hostages released in the first phase were alive or dead.

Hamas in turn accuses Israel of violating the agreement by not opening the crossing.

Gulf state Qatar, Hamas’s main mediator, announced earlier on Monday that it had reached a deal to release Yehud and two other hostages by Friday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that the hostages, including female soldier Agam Berger, would be released on Thursday. The release will follow an already scheduled release next Saturday, when the three hostages will be freed.

Hamas also submitted a list of information it needs to release hostages during the first phase of a six-week ceasefire.

Starting at 7 a.m., Palestinians were allowed to walk through part of the so-called Nezarim corridor without checks. The Nezarim Corridor is a military zone that bisects the territory south of Gaza City that Israel designated early in the war. A vehicle inspection station will be opened later and equipped with inspection mechanisms, but its details are currently unclear.

Under the first phase of the ceasefire, which lasts until early March, Hamas will release a total of 33 hostages in exchange for the release of nearly 2,000 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. Militants have released seven hostages Early Saturday included four female soldiers.More than 300 prisoners were exchanged for the current ceasefire, including many serving life sentences for deadly attacks against Israelis.

The second – and more difficult – phase of the deal has yet to be negotiated. Hamas has said it will not release the remaining 60 hostages unless Israel ends the war, while Netanyahu has said he remains committed to destroying the armed group and ending its nearly 18-year rule in Gaza.

The war started when thousands of Hamas militants stormed into southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping another 250 people. About 90 hostages remain in the Gaza Strip, and Israel believes about a third are dead.

Israel’s air and ground war has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians, more than half of whom were women and children, according to the Hamas health ministry in Gaza. It did not say how many of the dead were combatants. Israel says it has killed more than 17,000 militants but has provided no evidence.

Israeli bombings and ground operations have displaced about 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, often multiple times, and leveled entire communities.