As Gaza truce holds, Palestinians start returning; Israeli survivors deal with a dilemma

The Gaza ceasefire held in its second day as tens of thousands of Palestinians returned to their neighbourhoods on Saturday (October 11) and Israelis cheered Monday’s expected release of the remaining hostages.

“Gaza is completely destroyed. I have no idea where we should live or where to go,” said Mahmoud al-Shandoghli in Gaza City as bulldozers clawed through the wreckage of two years of war. A boy climbed debris to raise the Palestinian flag.

By Monday, Hamas is to begin releasing the remaining 48 Israeli hostages held in Gaza, around 20 of them believed to be alive. Israel will release around 2,000 Palestinians. Some 250 of them are serving prison sentences, while around 1,700 people seized from Gaza over the past two years are being held without any charge.

The Israel Prison Service said prisoners have been transferred to deportation facilities at Ofer and Ktzi’ot prisons, “awaiting instructions from the political echelon.”

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Trump’s peace summit

About 200 US troops arrived in Israel to monitor the ceasefire with Hamas. They will set up a centre to facilitate the flow of humanitarian aid as well as logistical and security assistance.

“This great effort will be achieved with no US boots on the ground in Gaza,” said Adm. Brad Cooper, head of the US military’s Central Command. Witkoff, Kushner and Cooper met with senior US and Israeli military officials in Gaza.

The Egyptian presidency, in a statement late Saturday, said Trump will co-chair a “peace summit” there on Monday on Gaza and the wider Middle East. Earlier, France confirmed that President Emmanuel Macron would visit Egypt on Monday.

New details from copy of signed deal

A copy of the signed ceasefire says Hamas must share all information related to any bodies of hostages that are not released within the first 72 hours, and that Israel will provide information about the remains of deceased Palestinians from Gaza held in Israel.

Hamas and Israel will share the information through a mechanism supported by mediators and the International Committee of the Red Cross. It will also ensure all hostages are exhumed and released.

The agreement says mediators and the ICRC will facilitate the exchange of the hostages and prisoners without public ceremonies or media coverage.

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New security arrangements

Trump’s initial 20-point plan calls for Israel to maintain an open-ended military presence inside Gaza, along its border with Israel. An international force, largely of troops from Arab and Muslim countries, would be responsible for security inside Gaza, though the timeline is unclear.

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi on Saturday called for the Gaza deployment of an international force authorised by the UN Security Council.

The Israeli military has said it will continue to operate defensively from the roughly 50 per cent of Gaza it still controls after pulling back to the agreed-upon lines.

United States Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, told Israeli officials on Friday that the United States would establish a centre in Israel to coordinate issues concerning Gaza until there is a permanent government, according to a readout of the meeting obtained by the AP.

Questions about Gaza’s future

Questions remain about who will govern Gaza after Israeli troops gradually pull back and whether Hamas will disarm, as called for in the ceasefire agreement.

Netanyahu, who unilaterally ended the previous ceasefire in March, has suggested Israel could resume its offensive if Hamas fails to disarm. He has pledged that the next stage would bring Hamas' disarmament.

The scale of Gaza’s destruction will become clearer if the truce holds. And the death toll is expected to rise as more bodies are found.

A manager at northern Gaza’s Shifa Hospital told the AP that 45 bodies pulled from the rubble in Gaza City had arrived over the past 24 hours. The manager, speaking on condition of anonymity for safety reasons, said the bodies had been missing for several days to two weeks.

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Tonnes of desperately needed food

Aid groups urged Israel to reopen more crossings to allow aid into famine-stricken Gaza. A UN official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss details not yet public, said Israel has approved expanded aid deliveries, starting Sunday.

The World Food Program said it was ready to restore 145 food distribution points. Before Israel sealed off Gaza in March, UN agencies provided food at 400 distribution points.

Though the timeline remains unclear, Palestinians will be able to access food at more locations than they could through the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which operated four locations after taking over distribution in May.

Some 170,000 tonnes of food aid have been positioned in neighbouring countries awaiting Israeli permission.

Survivors’ dilemma

But even as Israelis rejoice, many survivors and families of those killed in attacks face a wrenching dilemma: Should the killers of their loved ones go free, risking future attacks, or should the hostages held in the Gaza Strip be left to their fate?

One of them is Tal Hartuv. On her chest is a jagged scar, one of the 18 stab wounds on her body from a brutal attack outside Jerusalem in 2010 that killed her friend.

On Friday, as many were celebrating the deal between Israel and Hamas after two years of war, Hartuv read through the list of Palestinian prisoners set to be released and saw the name Iyad Hassan Hussein Fatafta — one of three men who tried to kill her and who was convicted of killing her friend, American tourist Kristine Luken.

“I can feel thrilled and hopeful and joyful that our hostages are coming home,” said Hartuv, who changed her name as part of her rehabilitation. “But I can still feel angry, I can feel betrayed, I can feel hollow. They’re not mutually exclusive,” she said.

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Painful memories

Twenty-two years ago, a suicide bomber blew up Bus 37 in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, killing 17 people, including nine children heading home from school.

Israel convicted five Palestinians of assisting the bomber. Three were released in 2011 as part of an exchange for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held in Gaza. A fourth was released during the last ceasefire, earlier this year.

For years, Yossi Zur, whose 17-year-old son, Asaf, was killed in the 2003 Haifa bombing, was a leader campaigning against releases, especially against the 2011 exchange, in which 1,027 Palestinian prisoners were released.

Zur remembers being heartbroken as buses were loaded with convicted militants leaving prison.

‘We need to bring them back’

Those released in the Shalit deal included Yahya Sinwar, who went on to orchestrate the October 7, 2023, attack that triggered the war. Sinwar became Hamas’ top leader before he was killed by Israeli troops last year.

“It was my failure that I did not manage to protect my son, and now I’m not managing to prevent his murderers from going out of prison,” Zur said.

But when fellow activists reached out to him to protest the ceasefire exchanges in the current war, he declined.

“With the amount of people that were taken on October 7, and with a range of ages, I just came to the conclusion that it’s not going to be worth the fight this time,” he said. “We need to bring them back.”

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‘I want to try and make Israel a safer place’

Ron Kehrmann’s 17-year-old daughter, Tal, a popular high school senior who loved singing and doodling, was also killed on Bus 37. He still cries whenever he thinks of her.

It feels better to focus on his activism, he says.

He remains staunchly opposed to the release of Palestinian prisoners, saying it’s about deterring attacks.

“I want to try and make Israel a safer place,” he said. The October 7 attack happened “because of the mistake of the government,” in releasing militants for Shalit, he said.

“If a youngster knows that at one point, if he succeeds in killing the Israelis, he will be released, so why shouldn’t he do it?” said Kehrmann. “Israel needs to break the equation of releasing hostages via releasing terrorists.”

In a previous ceasefire this year, Israel released nearly 1,800 Palestinians, including around 230 serving lengthy sentences for deadly attacks, in exchange for 25 hostages and the bodies of eight others. Most prisoners convicted of deadly attacks were deported.

(With agency inputs)