300,000 Displaced People Return to Northern Gaza

About 300,000 displaced Palestinians have returned to northern Gaza, where tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians began returning on Monday morning after being forcibly displaced from their homes by the Israeli army as a result of the 15-month genocide.

The government media office in the Gaza Strip announced the return of 300,000 displaced Palestinians to the north since Monday morning after they were allowed to cross under the ceasefire agreement.

The office explained that 300,000 displaced persons returned from the southern and central governorates to the Gaza and northern governorates via Rashid Street (west) and Salah al-Din Street (east), after 15 months of expulsion from their land.

Flood of Return

In epic scenes, thousands of Palestinians began returning via Rashid Street at 7 a.m. local time, on foot, in accordance with the ceasefire agreement.

Thousands of displaced persons also began to pass in their vehicles from the southern Gaza Strip via the Netzarim axis to their residential areas in the Gaza and North Governorates. They began to pass from the Netzarim axis in the middle of the Strip via Salah al-Din Street, after undergoing a security inspection.

The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) described the return of the displaced to the northern Gaza Strip this morning as a “victory for our people” and a declaration of the failure and defeat of the Israeli occupation and displacement plans.

She added in a separate statement: “The historic scene of the return of our displaced people, and this roaring human march that took place north, are now shattering the illusions of the fascist occupation of displacing our people, subjugating them, terrorizing them and dissuading them from the choice of resistance, and taking root and remaining steadfast on this land.”

A state of joy prevailed among the returnees who had been waiting for this moment to begin on Rashid Coastal Street since last Saturday.

120 thousand tents and mobile homes

The head of the government media office in the Gaza Strip, Salama Maarouf, revealed an operations room dedicated to monitoring the conditions of the displaced returning from the south of the Strip to its north, warning of a humanitarian disaster if urgent shelter supplies are not provided.

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Marouf stressed the “need to provide no less than 120,000 tents and mobile homes to house the displaced in the north,” and said, “The convoys of cars returning to northern Gaza extend for hundreds of meters, and he revealed appeals from citizens who were stranded and did not complete the return journey.”

Marouf warned of suffering and a humanitarian disaster for the returning displaced people if the required number of tents is not brought in, describing the matter as a priority with the necessity of providing basic necessities such as living tools and others.

He said that the competent authorities had prepared about 50 shelters in the past few days, along with leveling lands and digging water wells, noting that only 1,900 trucks had entered out of 2,400 trucks scheduled since the start of the ceasefire agreement in Gaza.

In addition, fuel and gas trucks did not enter, except for 900 tents, according to the head of the government media office in Gaza.

Yesterday morning, Monday, the occupation army withdrew, in accordance with the ceasefire agreement with the Palestinian resistance factions, from the Netzarim axis, which it established with the start of its large-scale ground military operation in the Gaza Strip on October 27, 2023.

Scenes of the return of displaced Palestinians to the north sparked resentment in Israel, where Channel 12 Israel titled its main news item by saying that displaced Palestinians are celebrating Israel’s humiliation.

After hesitation, the Israeli army removed, this morning, the barriers it had erected in the Netzarim corridor in the middle of the Strip, which had separated the northern part of the Strip from the rest of it since October 2023.

On January 19, a ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement between the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and Israel went into effect. The first phase will last for 42 days, during which negotiations will begin to begin a second and then a third phase, mediated by Qatar, Egypt, and the United States.