Thousands of people continued to travel by foot toward Gaza City on Saturday as a cease-fire held overnight, but early accounts described devastation across the area.
“The scale of destruction is really staggering,” said Olga Cherevko, a spokeswoman for the United Nations’ humanitarian office, who visited the city this past week. “We have a lot of people moving north to Gaza City and arriving to find the ruins where their homes used to be, so there is a lot of conflicted emotion.”
Mediators hope the cease-fire will lead to the end of two years of war. For many of those walking a coastal road to the north of Gaza, the pause in fighting offered a chance to return to home and to learn what remains of their lives there.
Ahmed Jabr, 37, traveling on Friday with his wife and seven children, had fled Gaza City last month and feared he might never return. “Now, I’m back,” Mr. Jabr said. “There are no bombardments, no airstrikes, no fear. I finally feel safe, and my children do, too.”
The cease-fire began at noon Friday after Israel’s government approved the deal early that morning.
According to the agreement, Hamas would release the remaining Israeli hostages held in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, and Israeli troops would withdraw to new deployment lines inside the territory.
The deal is based on a 20-point plan announced last month by President Trump. Though the deal reached this past week does not address some of the plan’s key stipulations, including whether Hamas will agree to disarm, Mr. Trump has, nevertheless, celebrated it as a victory.
“I’ve never seen happier people than many of these places, not just Israel, many of these places, they’re all dancing in the streets,” Mr. Trump said at a White House event on Friday. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
He told reporters that he believed there was “consensus on most” of the plan, and that the hostages would be released on Monday. “They’re getting them now,” he said. “They’re in some pretty rough places. Only a few people know where they are in some cases.”
In Gaza, joy at the pause in fighting has been tempered by the scale of destruction that many face as they return to the north.
On Saturday, Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesman for Gaza’s civil defense emergency rescue service, said that 63 bodies had been recovered in the streets of Gaza City since the cease-fire began on Friday. He said he believed dozens more were probably under the rubble.
On the coastal road from southern Gaza, Mona Mortaja, 27, an accounting student, was returning to a city she thought she might never see again.
“Our goodbye to Gaza felt like the last one,” she said on Friday.
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting from Haifa, Israel.
Liam Stack is a Times reporter who covers the culture and politics of the New York City region.
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