Israelis
and Palestinians celebrate as truce brings hope of ‘era of peace’
UN warns
Gaza still needs ‘lifesaving aid’ as world leaders gather in Sharm el-Sheikh to
discuss 20-point proposal
Julian
Borger in London, Seham Tantesh in Gaza and Daniel Boffey in Jerusalem
Mon 13
Oct 2025 22.50 CEST
There was
a rare moment of joy among Israelis and Palestinians on Monday as Hamas
released the remaining 20 living hostages in Gaza as part of a swap deal for
nearly 2,000 Palestinian detainees, on a day world leaders met in Egypt to try
to ensure the current limited truce is extended into a durable peace.
“The
prayers of millions have finally been answered,” Donald Trump declared at the
peace summit, with his counterparts lined up behind him. “At long last, we have
peace in the Middle East.”
The
Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, called for the ceasefire in Gaza to
usher in a new era in the Middle East. “Let the Gaza war be the last of wars in
the region,” the president said, amid widespread anxiety over how long the
current truce will last.
In Tel
Aviv, an estimated 65,000 Israelis gathered in “hostages square” and cheered
when a military helicopter carrying the 20 freed Israelis flew over the crowd
on the way to a nearby hospital. Live footage of their release and their family
reunions was broadcast on large screens around the square. The plaza has been
the centre of the national campaign for their release since 250 Israelis were
abducted on 7 October 2023 in the surprise Hamas attack on southern Israeli
communities that killed 1,200 people and ignited the conflict.
The
bodies of four hostages held in Gaza and handed over to the Red Cross by Hamas
on Monday were brought back to Israel, the army said.
A large
crowd also massed in the southern Gazan city of Khan Younis on Monday to
celebrate the return of nearly 1,700 Palestinians detained over the course of
the war, while in the West Bank capital of Ramallah people welcomed the arrival
of 88 Palestinian detainees who had been serving life sentences imposed by
Israeli courts. At least one had been imprisoned for 24 years. About 160 more
were deported through Egypt after their release.
The
Public Committee Against Torture in Israel said almost all Palestinian
detainees had been held without trial as “unlawful combatants”. It noted that
there were 22 minors among those released, some of the 360 Palestinian minors
held in Israeli custody.
The
ceasefire appeared to be holding in Gaza on Monday after a two-year Israeli
military onslaught that has killed nearly 68,000 people. But 2.1 million
surviving Palestinians there still face a deep and complex humanitarian crisis
in a sealed coastal strip where the overwhelming majority of homes have been
destroyed or severely damaged, and which has been starved of humanitarian
supplies for many months.
Tom
Fletcher, the head of the UN’s humanitarian relief branch, OCHA, said aid
deliveries had begun arriving in Gaza, with far more poised to enter in the
coming days. “Millions of Palestinians counting on life-saving aid getting
through at scale. We must make it happen,” Fletcher said while attending the
peace summit at Sharm el-Sheikh.
Trump,
who brokered the ceasefire last week, arrived in the Red Sea resort after a
short visit to Israel. He declared “a new day is rising” and signed a joint
declaration with the leaders of Egypt, Qatar and Turkey, intended to turn the
ceasefire into a coherent peace plan.
The last
Gaza ceasefire broke down after two months in March when Israel resumed its
offensive. There are fears in the region that this truce may also prove
precarious, especially given the resistance from the far-right wing of the
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition.
Trump
insisted his 20-point proposal for maintaining peace and rebuilding Gaza would
take root. “The document sets out a whole series of rules and regulations and
is very comprehensive,” the US president said.
The
contents of the declaration signed in Sharm el-Sheikh were not immediately made
public and the aspirations expressed in Trump’s 20 points, involving the
disarming of Hamas and the deployment of a stabilisation force under a
technocratic Palestinian committee overseen by a “peace board” chaired by the
US president, present an extremely challenging task.
The
“summit for peace” was a virtual who’s who of Middle Eastern and European
politics, while attracting other unlikely power brokers in the Trump era of
international diplomacy such as the president of Fifa, Gianni Infantino.
Leaders from at least 27 countries, many in Europe and the Middle East, joined
the summit in Sharm el-Sheikh on Monday.
The
leaders of the major Arab and regional states, including Sisi, Turkey’s Recep
Tayyip Erdoğan, and the leaders of the Gulf states Qatar and the United Arab
Emirates, were present. Keir Starmer and European leaders from France, Germany,
Italy and Hungary also attended.
However,
representatives from Israel or Hamas were absent from the signing ceremony. A
last-minute plan by Trump to invite Netanyahu was scuppered after Erdoğan said
he would not land his plane if the Israeli prime minister attended.
In Sharm
el-Sheikh, Trump said he had been watching videos of the Israeli hostages being
reunited with their families. “The level of love and sorrow, I’ve never seen
anything like it. It’s amazing. They haven’t seen their loved ones in such a
long time,” he said. “In one sense, it’s so horrible that this could take
place. In another, it’s so beautiful to see a new and beautiful day is rising.”
Beyond
the welcoming crowd in Khan Younis, the response across Gaza to the mass
detainee release was muted by the desperate circumstances and the nervousness
over whether the ceasefire would stick. It was unclear how many of those freed
on Monday were militants from Hamas or other armed groups, and how many had
simply been swept up by Israeli forces.
Some
returned to meet new children born during their captivity. Others came back to
find their relatives had been killed in a conflict that has seen a historically
high rate of civilian casualties among Palestinians. A UN human rights
commission has assessed Israel’s actions constitute genocide.
Haitham
Salem, one of the detainees freed on Monday, discovered on his release that his
wife and children had been killed and he was the sole survivor of his immediate
family. Naji al-Jafarawi returned on the same day his brother Saleh, a social
media journalist and activist, was being buried.
The
International Committee of the Red Cross, which oversaw the hostage and
detainee transfers, conducted brief interviews with all those released on
Monday, said it had also transferred the remains of four dead hostages to the
Israeli authorities.
Aid
workers said it was now a race against time to rush humanitarian assistance
into Gaza. It has been reported that, under the ceasefire agreement, Israel
will open five crossings into Gaza, including one leading from Egypt. Only one
crossing, at Kerem Shalom between Gaza and Israel, has been open for aid
deliveries throughout much of the conflict.
“With
easing of movement and access restrictions in multiple areas, we were able to
pre-position medical and emergency supplies to where they are needed most,
assess key roads for explosive hazards, and support displaced families in
flood-prone areas,” Fletcher said, adding that Israel had given security
clearance for 190,000 metric tons of humanitarian supplies to enter Gaza,
including food, tent components, medicine and other essentials.
Additional
reporting by Andrew Roth in Washington
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