New releases of hostages in the hands of Hamas and Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons are expected today, the second day of the truce between the Palestinian Islamist movement and the Jewish state, which offers – fragile – respite to its residents Gaza Stripafter seven weeks of war and relentless bombing.

The four-day, renewable truce was brokered on Wednesday by Qatar, with the support of the US and Egypt; the deal reached would see the release of 50 hostages held in the Gaza Strip in exchange for 150 Palestinians in Israeli prisons , mainly women and children.

Yesterday Friday, the first 24 hostages released by Hamas13 Israeli, 10 Thai and 1 Filipino nationals arrived in Israel via Egypt, while 39 Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli detention centers they returned home, where in several cases they were welcomed in an atmosphere of jubilation.

Qatar is expected to announce in a few hours how many hostages and prisoners will be released during the day.

Israeli authorities announced that they had received the list of hostages expected to leave the Gaza Strip today, but did not specify either their number or when they would be released.

“I return home”

In Tel Aviv, smiling faces of freed hostages were displayed on the facade of the Art museum last Friday night, along with the words “I’m coming home”.

Near Petah Tikva hospital in a Tel Aviv suburb, people cheered and waved Israeli flags as two helicopters carrying freed hostages approached.

“We came to support the children and the adults who are arriving, we’re very touched,” said Noah Halpern, who went with his family to the scene. “We want everyone to return home safe and sound.”

The Israeli military says around 240 people were abducted by Hamas militants when they launched their bloody raid on southern sectors of Israeli territory on October 7. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he is determined to guarantee that they will all return to Israel.

“I am happy to have found my family again. You are allowed to feel joy, you are allowed to cry. It’s humane,” said Yoni Asher, who welcomed his wife Doron and their two daughters, aged two and four, in a video distributed by the Hostage Families Forum.

“But I won’t celebrate, I won’t celebrate until the last hostages have gone home,” he added.

His wife lost her mother when the attack took place, while his brother and mother-in-law’s partner remain hostages. “We still have difficult days ahead of us,” he said.

Rejoicing in the West Bank

In the occupied West Bank, scenes of jubilation erupted as Palestinian prisoners released from Israel under the deal returned, such as in Beitunia, and further north, in the Nablus refugee camp.

Chanting, under fireworks, amid a sea of ​​flags of Palestine and Palestinian movements, including the green banner of Hamas, released prisoners hugged their families, with many crying in the arms of their emotional relatives.

In East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel after the 1967 war, any celebration was, on the contrary, prohibited. At her family home in the Beit Hanina neighborhood, Mara Bakir, 24, who spent eight years in prison for attempting to kill an Israeli border guard, gave one interview after another.

“I am happy, but my release came at the price of the blood of martyrs,” she said, referring to the thousands of Palestinians who have lost their lives in the shelling of the Gaza Strip. “I spent the end of my childhood and adolescence in prison, away from my parents (…) but that’s how things are with the state that oppresses us and leaves none of us alone,” he added.

According to Israeli authorities, 1,200 people, most of them civilians, were killed on October 7 in the raid by the Palestinian Islamist movement, which is designated a “terrorist” organization by Israel, the European Union and the United States.

In retaliation, Israel’s military launched a relentless bombardment of the Palestinian enclave and on October 27 began a ground operation to “eliminate” Hamas.

In the Gaza Strip, 14,854 people, including 6,150 children, were killed due to massive Israeli bombardment from the air, land and sea, according to the latest tally from the Hamas Health Ministry.

Traffic jam

The truce offers -fragile- respite to the residents of Gaza. The blares of war were yesterday replaced by the honking of car horns and the sirens of ambulances trying to find a way through, among evacuees who fled en masse from hospitals and schools where they had taken refuge to “go home”.

More than half of the homes in the Palestinian enclave have been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN, which estimates that the forcibly displaced are 1.7 million Palestinians, the vast majority of the Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million residents.

In Khan Yunis, in the southern part of the Palestinian enclave, an old man with a bag slung over his shoulder was walking. In a hoarse voice, he said that he was not afraid because a “truce” had been declared and that he would return “to his village”, in the community of Khuza’a, on the border with Israel.

Around him, thousands of men, women and children were marching, piling into cars or carts. They were moving north.

Leaflets in Arabic dropped from the air by Israeli army planes warned: “the war is not over yet.”

Chahal, the Israeli military, has designated the northern part of the Palestinian enclave, where Gaza City is located, an operations zone and has repeatedly ordered all civilians to leave. “Returning to the north is forbidden and dangerous,” he underlined in leaflets he dropped yesterday, with three exclamation points.

Despite Chahal’s warning, thousands of Palestinians have tried to go to northern areas of the Gaza Strip, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Still according to OCHA, at least one person was killed and dozens injured in “incidents” involving Israeli army forces, opening fire and using tear gas to repel Palestinians heading north.

The truce is expected to allow more aid trucks to enter the Gaza Strip, which has been under an Israeli blockade since Hamas took power there in 2007 and a “total siege” since October 9, when its food supply was completely cut off. medicine, fuel, electricity, water.

Some 200 trucks carrying humanitarian aid entered the Gaza Strip yesterday, according to the Israeli Defense Ministry’s agency responsible for political affairs in the Palestinian enclave. It was the “largest convoy of humanitarian aid” to arrive there since the outbreak of war, OCHA noted.