Israel says Gazans can return home, more hostage releases agreed

GAZA CITY, Palestine: Israel said Palestinians could begin returning to the north of the war-battered Gaza Strip on Monday after a deal was reached with Hamas for the release of another six hostages, according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.

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

Israel had been preventing vast crowds of Palestinians from using a coastal road to return to northern Gaza, accusing Hamas of violating the truce agreement by failing to release civilian women hostages.

“Hamas has backtracked and will carry out an additional phase of releasing hostages this Thursday,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement, adding that three hostages would be released that day, with another three captives set for release on Saturday.

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.

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.

In Gaza, cars and carts loaded with belongings jammed a road near the Netzarim Corridor that Israel has blocked, preventing the expected return of hundreds of thousands of people to northern Gaza.

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 07:00 am (0500 GMT) and by car at 9:00 am.

The truce has brought a surge of food, fuel, medicines and other aid into rubble-strewn Gaza, but the UN says “the humanitarian situation remains dire”.