Families await hostage release as Palestinians return to 'ghost town' during Gaza ceasefire

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The Gaza Strip ceasefire has held in its second day as tens of thousands of Palestinians returned to their neighbourhoods and Israelis cheered the expected release of remaining hostages.

Israelis applauded US President Donald Trump, and some booed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner addressed a weekly rally in Tel Aviv organised by the families of the remaining hostages.

“To the hostages themselves, our brothers and sisters, you are coming home,” Witkoff told the crowd estimated in the hundreds of thousands, who shouted, “Thank you Trump”.

Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan is one of about 20 hostages believed to still be alive, said: “We will continue to shout and fight until everyone is home”.

“We finally feel hope, but we cannot and will not stop now,” added Zairo Shachar Mohr Munder, whose uncle Abraham was abducted during the October 7 Hamas attack and his body recovered in August.

When will the hostages be released?

Hamas will begin releasing Israeli hostages held in Gaza on Monday morning local time, a top official from the militant group told Agence France-Presse, before Trump chairs an international summit in Egypt on his peace plan for the region.

“According to the signed agreement, the prisoner exchange is set to begin on Monday morning as agreed,” Hamas official Osama Hamdan told AFP in an interview.

As part of the deal’s first phase, Hamas will hand over 47 remaining hostages — living and dead — from the 251 abducted in the October 7 attack two years ago, in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.

The remains of one more hostage, held in Gaza since 2014, are also expected to be returned.

Israel will free about 250 Palestinians serving prison sentences as well as about 1,700 people seized from the Gaza Strip over the past two years and held without charge.

‘Will we live 20 years in a tent?’

More than 500,000 Palestinians had returned to Gaza City by Sunday AEST, according to Gaza’s civil defence agency.

For many Gazans, the journey back through the enclave’s wasteland led to homes reduced to rubble.

“My house, which I built 40 years ago, was gone in a moment,” said Ahmed al-Jabari, as he stood in the wreckage of a Gaza City street. “I’m happy that there is no blood, no killing (but) where will we go? Will we live 20 years in a tent?”

Drone footage shot by AFP showed whole city blocks reduced to a twisted mess of concrete and steel reinforcing wire.

In this aerial view, People walk amid the destruction in Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip

Many Gazans came back to their homes reduced to rubble. Source: AFP / -/AFP

“We walked for hours, and every step was filled with fear and anxiety for my home,” Raja Salmi, 52, told AFP.

When she reached the Al-Rimal neighbourhood, she found her house utterly destroyed.

“I stood before it and cried. All those memories are now just dust,” she said.

The walls and windows of five-storey apartment blocks had been torn off and now lay choking the roadsides as disconsolate residents poked through the rubble, searching for homes amid collapsed concrete slabs, destroyed vehicles and debris.

“It felt like a ghost town, not Gaza,” Sami Musa, 28 said. “The smell of death still lingers in the air.”

Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed at least 67,682 people, according to the Gaza health ministry.

Trump’s peace summit

Trump and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will then chair a summit of more than 20 countries in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Monday afternoon local time, the Egyptian presidency announced.

The meeting 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”, it said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said he will attend, as has Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer, his counterparts from Italy and Spain, Giorgia Meloni and Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón, and French President Emmanuel Macron.

There was no immediate word on whether Netanyahu will be there while Hamas said it would not take part as it had “acted principally through … Qatari and Egyptian mediators” during talks, Hamas political bureau member Hossam Badran said.

Despite the apparent breakthrough, mediators still have the tricky task of securing a longer-term political solution that will see Hamas hand in weapons and step aside from governing Gaza.

Badran said the second phase of Trump’s plan “contains many complexities and difficulties” while one Hamas official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said disarming was “out of the question”.

Under the Trump plan, as Israel conducts a phased withdrawal from Gaza’s cities, it will be replaced by a multi-national force from Egypt, Qatar, Türkiye and the United Arab Emirates, coordinated by a US-led command centre in Israel.