(27 Jan 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Wadi Gaza – 27 January 2025
1. Various of people walking with their belongings
STORYLINE:
Israel on Monday began allowing thousands of Palestinians to return to the heavily destroyed north of the Gaza Strip for the first time since the early weeks of the 15-month war with Hamas, in accordance with a fragile ceasefire.
An Associated Press journalist walked with a crowd as men, women and young children carried their belongings on foot near the beach in Wadi Gaza.
The opening was delayed for two days over a dispute between Hamas and Israel, which said the militant group had changed the order of the hostages it released in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
Mediators resolved the dispute overnight.
Palestinians who have been sheltering in squalid tent camps and schools-turned-shelters for over a year are eager to return to their homes — even knowing that they have likely been damaged or destroyed.
Many had feared Israel would make their exodus permanent, and expressed similar concerns about an idea floated by President Donald Trump to resettle large numbers of Palestinians in Egypt and Jordan.
The ceasefire is aimed at winding down the deadliest and most destructive war ever fought between Israel and Hamas and securing the release of dozens of hostages captured in the militants’ October 7, 2023, attack, which triggered the fighting.
Israel ordered the wholescale evacuation of the north in the opening days of the war and sealed it off shortly after ground troops moved in.
Around a million people fled to the south in October 2023, while hundreds of thousands remained in the north, which had some of the heaviest fighting and the worst destruction of the war.
AP video shot by Ossama Saleh
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