Gaza: Tens of thousands of Palestinians blocked roads to return to their homes in northern Gaza on Sunday, expressing frustration after Israel violated a ceasefire agreement on Hamas and refused to open crossing points.
The hold-up, a day after another exchange of Israeli hostages held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons, underscores the dangers hanging over a cease-fire between the long-standing militant group and Israel in a series of Gaza wars.
In central Gaza, people were waiting on main roads leading north, some in cars and others on foot, witnesses said.
“A sea of people is waiting for the signal to go back to Gaza City and to the north,” said Tamar al-Barai, a displaced person from Gaza City. “That’s the contract that’s signed, isn’t it?”
“Many of them don’t know if their homes back home are still standing. But they want to go regardless, they want to camp next to the ruins of their homes, they want a sense of home. want to,” he told Reuters via a chat app.
On Sunday, witnesses said many people slept overnight on Salah al-Din Road, the main north-south thoroughfare and the coastal road north to Netzaram, which runs through the middle of the Gaza Strip. Israeli soldiers were waiting to pass through the checkpoints in the corridor.
One Palestinian was killed and 15 others wounded by Israeli fire, officials at al-Awda Hospital said, as soldiers apparently tried to prevent people from getting too close on the coastal road. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
Cars, trucks and rickshaws were loaded with mattresses, food and tents that served as shelters for more than a year for those living in the central and southern areas of the enclave.
Under an agreement reached with Egyptian and Qatari mediators and backed by the United States, Israel’s goal was to allow Palestinians displaced from the north to return to their homes.
But Israel said that Hamas’s failure to hand over a list of hostages who were alive or to hand over Erbil Yehud, an Israeli woman taken hostage during a Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, meant that He had violated. The contract
As a result, checkpoints in central Gaza will not be opened to allow crossings to the north, it said in a statement. Hamas issued a statement blaming Israel for the delay and blaming it for the deadlock.
‘place to screw up’
On Saturday, US President Donald Trump directed the US military to drop 2,000-pound bombs that his predecessor Joe Biden ordered to prevent delivery to Israel over concerns about their impact on Gaza’s civilian population. was
He also called on Egypt and Jordan to take more Palestinians from Gaza, either temporarily or permanently, saying “we just have to clear this issue”.
“It is literally a place of demolition, almost everything has been demolished and people are dying there,” he told reporters after meeting Jordan’s King Abdullah.
Reacting to the remarks, an official from Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that runs Gaza, echoed the long-standing fear of Palestinians about being permanently expelled from their homes.
Bassem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said the Palestinians “will not accept any offer or solution, even if (such offers) appear to be well-intentioned under the guise of reconstruction, as US President Trump has done.” has been announced in the proposals. Reuters.
Many Palestinians stranded on roads leading to the north also rejected Trump’s proposed solution.
If he thinks he’s going to forcefully displace the Palestinian people (then) it’s impossible, impossible, impossible. The Palestinian people firmly believe that this land is theirs, this soil is their land,” said Magdi Seidam.
“No matter how much effort is made to destroy Israel, to break it and to show people that it has won, in reality it has not.”
The Israeli military issued a warning to Palestinians not to approach their positions in Gaza and said troops had fired warning shots on several occasions, but said “so far, we have not reported any casualties to the suspects as a result of this firing.” Ignorant of.”
