Crowds of joyous Palestinians stream into northern Gaza — though uncertainty awaits them

WĀDĪ AS SALQĀ – From early Monday morning and hours afterward, crowds of Palestinians filled Gaza’s main coastal road for kilometers (miles) as they streamed north. With their belongings on their backs, they smiled, hugged and sang, overjoyed on the prospect of returning dwelling after greater than a yr of conflict.

Related Press images, movies and drone footage present tens of hundreds making their means on foot alongside the highway. On one aspect was the Mediterranean Sea; on the opposite stretched a landscape of destroyed buildings and bulldozed land left behind by withdrawing Israeli forces.

Households carried baggage of belongings and rolled up blankets. On their shoulders, males carried younger youngsters — or sacks of meals and steel cannisters of cooking fuel. Ladies balanced infants of their arms with satchels of garments and jugs of water. A bit of lady wearing teddy-bear pyjamas held her youthful sister’s hand as they trailed their mom. A teen strapped a pet provider to his chest together with his cat inside.

Forward of the returning Palestinians lies an unsure destiny. Lots of their properties had been destroyed as greater than 15 months of Israeli bombardment and floor offensive in opposition to Hamas have leveled large parts of Gaza City and the encompassing north.

Nonetheless, the temper was celebratory — a pointy distinction to the worry and shock expressed by Palestinians over the previous yr as they were driven south alongside this similar route to flee Israel’s offensive. Many on Monday had been smiling. A baby waved a “V-for-victory” signal. Two pals hugged in a reunion.

One had fled from the north early in Israel’s marketing campaign. The opposite, who had stayed behind, got here out to the coastal highway to greet his good friend. “Thank God, we meet once more after 470 days,” he mentioned.

One outdated girl being pushed in a wheelchair sang a conventional Palestinian track of perseverance relationship again to what they name the Nakba — the 1948 expulsion and dispersal of Palestinians from their properties throughout the conflict surrounding Israel’s creation.

“Stand by one another, folks of Palestine, stand by one another. Palestine is gone, but it surely has not bid you a remaining farewell,” she sang with a smile on her face. Then she added, “Thank God, we’re returning to our properties, after struggling a lot destroy and starvation and illness.”

The crowds crossed the Netzarim hall, a swath of land throughout the breadth of the Gaza Strip that Israeli forces became a navy zone as they sealed off the north and ordered Palestinians to flee for their very own security. The north was the positioning of probably the most intense preventing, usually in densely populated areas the place Israel alleged the militants hid amongst civilians.

All through the conflict, Palestinians might cross the hall heading south, however they had been barred from returning north.

Now, Hamas fighters had been seen in some spots alongside the freeway because the crowds handed, an indication of the militant group’s surviving energy in Gaza regardless of Israel’s vows to get rid of it.

Underneath the ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel, Israeli forces pulled again from the 2 fundamental highways main north by way of the Netzarim hall to permit Palestinians to return. On Salaheddin Avenue, the primary highway by way of central Gaza, automobiles and vehicles heading north had been piled with mattresses and different belongings.

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Observe AP’s conflict protection at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war