(21 Feb 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Gaza City, Gaza Strip – 21 February 2025
1. Various of destruction, people walking in muddy street
2. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Mustafa Huso, Gaza resident:
"We are tired of this news. I frankly returned from the south on the first day. I slept at the checkpoint for a night in order to go back to the north. We are tired of the war. That is enough. We want to live, we want to have stability, we want to settle (down in a place). Until now, I have not settled in a place yet. Every day I sleep in a (different) area because there is no place for me to settle in. Every day, I say ‘this place should be quiet, that area must be okay.’ To this day, we have not settled down. We want to live."
3. Wide of vehicle driving past destruction
4. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Mohannad al-Khatib, Gaza resident:
"We want all the terms of the agreement (to be fulfilled) according to what the mediators in Qatar agreed upon, so that we are not destroyed, so that the war does not return and so that the destruction does not return in Gaza. We could not believe that we would finally get to breathe (in relief) and the war would end. The situation is very difficult. One is barely able to adapt to this life. Things are very difficult."
5. Various of people walking near destruction
STORYLINE:
Displaced Palestinians who returned to their homes in northern Gaza fear the ceasefire in the Strip will not hold after a recent statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu said a body that Hamas militants released during the handover of remains of Israeli hostages is that of a woman from Gaza instead of that of Shiri Bibas, the mother of two young boys whose bodies were returned on Thursday.
Footage from The Associated Press showed the empty, destroyed streets of Gaza City, where some buildings are partially collapsed and burned while others have been reduced to rubble.
Standing on the muddy streets of the city was resident Mustafa Huso, who said he was "tired of this news" about the returned body.
Huso said he has been moving from one spot to another because he is struggling to secure shelter.
He said he was barely able to get by after returning from the south, adding "we want to live."
Hamas militants turned over four bodies on Thursday under the tenuous ceasefire, which has paused over 15 months of war.
Netanyahu vowed revenge Friday for what he described as a “cruel and malicious violation” of the ceasefire agreement after a body that Hamas released as part of the deal was found to not be that of Shiri Bibas as the militants had promised.
In a statement Friday, Hamas suggested a mix-up of remains might have occurred after Israeli bombing of the area where both the Israeli hostages and Palestinians were present.
The group said it would “conduct a thorough review.”
The incident raised questions about the future of the fragile ceasefire deal, which has paused the fighting and is due to see its first phase end in early March.
Israeli bombardment and ground operations during the fighting have transformed entire neighborhoods in several cities into rubble-strewn wastelands, with blackened shells of buildings and mounds of debris stretching away in all directions.
At its height, the war displaced 90% of Gaza’s population. Many have returned to their homes to find nothing left and no way of rebuilding.
Meanwhile, Mohannad al-Khatib, a displaced man who returned to Gaza City, said he believed that all terms of the ceasefire agreement should be honored.
AP video shot by Abdel Kareem Hana
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