Thousands of Palestinians began returning to a ravaged northern Gaza and what was left of their homes and families, after Hamas agreed to release more hostages than expected this week to keep its cease-fire with Israel in place.
Israel allowed displaced Gazans to begin crossing a military zone that bisects the enclave on Monday after Israeli forces refused their movement over the weekend, when the return of Palestinians was expected per the cease-fire deal. Israel had said it wouldn’t allow Gazans to move north after Hamas didn’t release a civilian hostage on Saturday, something that was agreed as part of the deal, according to an Israeli official.
But a breakthrough was announced early Monday.
The Israeli prime minister’s office and Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said that an agreement had been reached to soon release the Israeli hostage, Arbel Yehoud, who had been expected to be released Saturday , along with two others held in Gaza. Hamas delivered mediators an update on the status of the hostages to be released in the first stage. Twenty-five of the 33 hostages to be released in the first of the multiphase deal are alive and eight are dead, according to a person familiar with the matter. Of these, seven living hostages have already been released since the cease-fire went into effect on Jan. 19.

Palestinians, who were displaced to the south at Israel’s order during the war, wait to head back to their homes in northern Gaza by vehicle through Salahudeen Road, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in the central Gaza Strip, January 27, 2025. REUTERS/Hatem Khaled TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
“Hamas backed down and will conduct another batch of releases of hostages on Thursday,” the Israeli prime minister’s office said. Three additional hostages are also slated to be released as scheduled on Saturday.
With that, the crossing was opened. Flocks of people, their belongings in-tow, traveled by foot north along the Gaza Strip’s main coastal roadway, some jubilant to re-enter northern Gaza for the first time since the war began. Some were emotional as they reunited with loved ones, and others were anxious as they searched for their own.
Suha Arafat, a 47-year-old mother of six, left her home in Gaza City in the first weeks of the war, as Israel ordered more than one million Palestinians to move south. On Monday, she carried her belongings from central Gaza in her hands and her 9-year-old daughter on her back as they trudged through a sea of other displaced people heading toward Gaza City, roughly 7 miles away.
“Devastation and masses of people is all I can see,” Arafat said by phone as she made her way north. “It feels like a parallel world.”

Palestinians, who were displaced to the south at Israel’s order during the war, head back to their homes in northern Gaza by vehicle through Salahudeen Road, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in the central Gaza Strip, January 27, 2025. REUTERS/Hatem Khaled
The Israeli military choked off northern Gaza from the rest of the enclave early in the war. The north was where Israel’s ground invasion began. It is home to some of the highest casualty incidents of the war . People there endured long stretches without adequate aid deliveries, resulting in a humanitarian catastrophe and widespread hunger . Northern Gaza was also the site of a ferocious Israeli campaign that began late last year, which renewed fighting in areas the Israeli military said it had previously cleared.
Israel has said much of Hamas’s presence has been concentrated in northern Gaza. The military has said that throughout the war, Hamas militants have resurfaced in areas from which Israeli troops and airstrikes had rooted them out.
As Palestinians hoped to begin rebuilding their lives in northern Gaza, President Trump said he wants to “clean out” the Gaza Strip , urging Jordan and Egypt to take in refugees either temporarily or for the long term, a move rejected by Arab countries since the war began and condemned by Palestinian leadership.
“You’re talking about a million and half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” the president told reporters on Air Force One on Saturday. “It is literally a demolition site, almost everything is demolished and people are dying there, so I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace for a change.”

Palestinians, who were displaced to the south at Israel’s order during the war, wait to head back to their homes in northern Gaza by vehicle through Salahudeen Road, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in the central Gaza Strip, January 27, 2025. REUTERS/Hatem Khaled
Most of Gaza’s more than two million residents have fled their homes at least once during the 15-month-long war that began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas launched attacks on southern Israel that left about 1,200 dead and around 250 taken hostage. More than 47,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to local health authorities, who don’t say how many were combatants.
The multiphase deal’s protocols call for female hostages—civilians and soldiers—to be released first, followed by elderly and wounded men and then the bodies of the dead. But the two sides negotiated the first phase under the expectation that Hamas would first release female civilians and then female soldiers.
That meant Israel had expected Yehoud, 29, to be among those freed on Saturday. Which hostages are released and when is hugely sensitive in Israel, where some families of captives are unsure whether their loved ones are alive or dead .
The deal also calls for hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli prisons, many of whom are being held without charge, to be released. About 290 have been released so far, including some serving life sentences, of whom 70 were handed over to Egypt. The Palestinian prisoners sent to Egypt will have the choice to stay or move to another country, mediators said.
Write to Omar Abdel-Baqui at omar.abdel-baqui@wsj.com and Anat Peled at anat.peled@wsj.com