1)Palestinians fear a repeat of their 1948 mass expulsion in the wake of Trump’s remarks on Gaza

Courtesy Barrie360.com and The Associated Press

By Joseph Krauss, Feb 5, 2025

Palestinians will mark this year the 77th anniversary of their mass expulsion from what is now Israel, an event that is at the core of their national struggle.

But in many ways, that experience pales in comparison to the calamity now faced in the Gaza Strip — particularly as President Donald Trump has suggested that displaced Palestinians in Gaza be permanently resettled outside the war-torn territory and that the United States take “ownership” of the enclave.

Palestinians refer to their 1948 expulsion as the Nakba, Arabic for catastrophe. Some 700,000 Palestinians — a majority of the prewar population — fled or were driven from their homes before and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that followed Israel’s establishment.

After the war, Israel refused to allow them to return because it would have resulted in a Palestinian majority within its borders. Instead, they became a seemingly permanent refugee community that now numbers some 6 million, with most living in slum-like urban refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

In Gaza, the refugees and their descendants make up around three-quarters of the population.

Israel’s rejection of what Palestinians say is their right of return to their 1948 homes has been a core grievance in the conflict and was one of the thorniest issues in peace talks that last collapsed 15 years ago. The refugee camps have always been the main bastions of Palestinian militancy.

Now, many Palestinians fear a repeat of their painful history on an even more cataclysmic scale.

All across Gaza, Palestinians in recent days have been loading up cars and donkey carts or setting out on foot to visit their destroyed homes after a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war took hold Jan. 19. The images from several rounds of mass evacuations throughout the war — and their march back north on foot — are strikingly similar to black-and-white photographs from 1948.

Mustafa al-Gazzar, in his 80s, recalled in 2024 his family’s months-long flight from their village in what is now central Israel to the southern city of Rafah, when he was 5. At one point they were bombed from the air, at another, they dug holes under a tree to sleep in for warmth.

Al-Gazzar, now a great-grandfather, was forced to flee again in the war, this time to a tent in Muwasi, a barren coastal area where some 450,000 Palestinians live in a squalid camp. He said then the conditions were worse than in 1948 when the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees was able to regularly provide food and other essentials.

“My hope in 1948 was to return, but my hope today is to survive,” he said.

The war in Gaza, which was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, has killed over 47,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, making it by far the deadliest round of fighting in the history of the conflict. The initial Hamas attack killed some 1,200 Israelis.

The war has forced some 1.7 million Palestinians — around three-quarters of the territory’s population — to flee their homes, often multiple times. That is well over twice the number that fled before and during the 1948 war.

Israel has sealed its border. Egypt has only allowed a small number of Palestinians to leave, in part because it fears a mass influx of Palestinians could generate another long-term refugee crisis.

The international community is strongly opposed to any mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza — an idea embraced by far-right members of the Israeli government, who refer to it as “voluntary emigration.”

Israel has long called for the refugees of 1948 to be absorbed into host countries, saying that calls for their return are unrealistic and would endanger its existence as a Jewish-majority state. It points to the hundreds of thousands of Jews who came to Israel from Arab countries during the turmoil following its establishment, though few of them want to return.

Even if Palestinians are not expelled from Gaza en masse, many fear that they will never be able to return to their homes or that the destruction wreaked on the territory will make it impossible to live there. One U.N. estimate said it would take until 2040 to rebuild destroyed homes.

The Jewish militias in the 1948 war with the armies of neighboring Arab nations were mainly armed with lighter weapons like rifles, machine guns and mortars. Hundreds of depopulated Palestinian villages were demolished after the war, while Israelis moved into Palestinian homes in Jerusalem, Jaffa and other cities.

In Gaza, Israel has unleashed one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns in recent history, at times dropping 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) bombs on dense, residential areas. Entire neighborhoods have been reduced to wastelands of rubble and plowed-up roads, many littered with unexploded bombs.

Yara Asi, a Palestinian assistant professor at the University of Central Florida who has done research on the damage to civilian infrastructure in the war, says it’s “extremely difficult” to imagine the kind of international effort that would be necessary to rebuild Gaza.

Even before the war, many Palestinians spoke of an ongoing Nakba, in which Israel gradually forces them out of Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories it captured during the 1967 war that the Palestinians want for a future state. They point to home demolitions, settlement construction and other discriminatory policies that long predate the war, and which major rights groups say amount to apartheid, allegations Israel denies.

Asi and others fear that if another genuine Nakba occurs, it will be in the form of a gradual departure.

“It won’t be called forcible displacement in some cases. It will be called emigration, it will be called something else,” Asi said.

“But in essence, it is people who wish to stay, who have done everything in their power to stay for generations in impossible conditions, finally reaching a point where life is just not livable.”

2) Sick and wounded children begin crossing from Gaza to Egypt in first opening in months

Courtesy Barrie360.com and The Associated Press

By Ahmed Hatem and Amr Nabil, Feb. 1, 2025

A group of 50 sick and wounded Palestinian children began crossing to Egypt for treatment through Gaza’s Rafah crossing on Saturday, the first opening of the border since Israel captured it nearly nine months ago.

The reopening of the Rafah crossing represents a significant breakthrough that bolsters the ceasefire deal Israel and Hamas agreed to earlier this month. Israel agreed to reopen the crossing after Hamas released the last living female hostages in Gaza.

Egypt’s Al-Qahera television showed at least two Palestinian Red Cross ambulances pulling up to the crossing gate. Several children were brought out on gurneys and transferred to ambulances on the Egyptian side. From there, they were rushed to hospitals in the nearby Egyptian city of el-Arish and elsewhere. Footage showed one young girl whose foot had been amputated being loaded into an Egyptian ambulance.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said around 60 family members were accompanying the children.

The children are the first in what are meant to be regular evacuations of Palestinians through the crossing for treatment abroad. Over the past 15 months, Israel’s campaign against Hamas in retaliation for the militants’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel has decimated Gaza’s health sector, leaving most of its hospitals out of operation even as more than 110,000 Palestinians were wounded by Israel’s bombardment and ground offensives, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

Remaining facilities are unable to perform many crucial treatments or specialized surgeries for wounds or diseases. Mohammed Zaqout, the director of hospitals in Gaza’s Health Ministry, said more than 6,000 patients were ready to be evacuated abroad, and more than 12,000 patients were in urgent need of treatment. He said the small numbers set to be evacuated will not cover the need, “and we hope the number will increase.”

Rafah is Gaza’s only crossing that does not enter into Israel. Israeli forces closed the Rafah crossing in early May after seizing it during an offensive on the southern city. Egypt shut down its side of the passage in protest.

Even before the Gaza war began, the Rafah crossing represented a crucial escape valve from the territory, where a 15-year Israeli-Egyptian blockade aimed at containing Hamas undermined health facilities and impoverished the population. Palestinians routinely applied for permission to travel outside the territory for lifesaving treatments not available in Gaza, including chemotherapy.

It took some diplomatic gymnastics to reopen the crossing and overcome security disputes between Israeli, Egyptian and Palestinian officials. Hamas had overseen the border since 2007, when it took control of Gaza from its rival, the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority, or PA, after winning parliamentary elections in 2006.

Israeli troops remain at the Rafah crossing and in the Philadelphia Corridor, a band of land running the length of the border. Israel has refused to allow Hamas to resume management of the crossing, accusing it of smuggling weapons through tunnels under the border, though Egypt says it destroyed the tunnels from its side and stopped smuggling years ago. Israel also refuses to allow the Palestinian Authority to officially run the crossing.

Instead, the crossing will be staffed by Palestinians from Gaza who previously served as border officers with the PA, but they will not be allowed to wear official PA insignia, a European diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to brief the media. Israel has screened the officers to ensure they have no affiliation with Hamas, the European diplomat added.

European Union monitors will also be present, as they were before 2007.

Negotiations on the second phase of the deal — which calls for a permanent ceasefire, full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the release of any remaining hostages — are supposed to begin Monday. Israel has resisted the notion that the PA would control postwar Gaza.

3) Hamas frees 3 hostages and Israel releases Palestinian prisoners in 4th exchange of ceasefire

Courtesy Barrie360.com and The Associated Press

By Mohammad Jahjouh and Imad Isseid, Feb. 1, 2025

Hamas militants freed three male hostages held for more than a year in the Gaza Strip on Saturday and Israel released 183 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails in the fourth such exchange of a ceasefire deal that has halted 15 months of intense fighting.

Militants handed Yarden Bibas and French-Israeli Ofer Kalderon to Red Cross officials in the southern city of Khan Younis, while American-Israeli hostage Keith Siegel, looking pale and thin, was released to the Red Cross later Saturday morning in Gaza City to the north.

All three were abducted during the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that sparked the war. Their release brings to 18 the number of hostages released since the ceasefire began on Jan. 19.

The releases were quick and orderly, in contrast to chaotic scenes that unfolded on Thursday when armed militants appeared to struggle to hold back a crowd during a hostage release. In both of Saturday’s releases, masked and armed militants stood in lines as the hostages walked onto a stage and waved before being led off and handed over to the Red Cross.

In Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square, thousands of people gathered to watch the releases being transmitted live on a large screen, waving signs and cheering.

Shortly after Siegel arrived in Israel, a bus departed Ofer Military Prison with some 32 prisoners bound for the West Bank. Crowds of well-wishers greeted the bus, cheering and hoisting the released prisoners on their shoulders in scenes of jubilation.

The Israeli Prison Authority said all 183 Palestinian prisoners slated for release Saturday had been freed. Most, including 111 arrested after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack, were released to Gaza. Just over two dozen returned to cheering crowds in the occupied West Bank. Another seven serving life sentences were transferred to Egypt ahead of their deportation.

Ceasefire brings respite to battered Gaza

The ceasefire is aimed at winding down the deadliest and most destructive war ever fought between Israel and Hamas. The deal has held for two weeks, allowing for increased aid to flow into the tiny coastal territory and for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to return to the remnants of their homes in the north of the strip.

During the truce’s six-week first phase, a total of 33 Israeli hostages are to be freed in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. Israel says it has received information from Hamas that eight of those hostages were either killed in Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack or have died in captivity.

Also on Saturday, a group of 50 sick and wounded Palestinian children left Gaza for treatment through the Rafah border crossing to Egypt, in the first opening of the enclave’s sole exit since Israel captured it nine months ago. A European Union civilian mission was deployed Friday to prepare for the reopening.

The reopening of Rafah marked another key step in the first phase of the ceasefire.

Israel and Hamas are set next week to begin negotiating a second phase of the ceasefire, which calls for releasing the remaining hostages and extending the truce indefinitely. The war could resume in early March if an agreement is not reached.

Israel says it is still committed to destroying Hamas, even after the militant group reasserted its rule over Gaza within hours of the latest ceasefire. A key far-right partner in Netanyahu’s coalition is calling for the war to resume after the ceasefire’s first phase.

Hamas says it won’t release the remaining hostages without an end to the war and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Families and neighbors celebrate return of hostages

Siegel, 65, originally from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, was taken hostage from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, along with his wife, Aviva Siegel. She was released during a brief 2023 ceasefire and has waged a high-profile campaign to free Keith and other hostages.

There were sighs of relief and cheers in a living room where members of the kibbutz watched Siegel’s release. Many of those in the room were family friends, who applauded upon seeing Siegel, while some teared up.

Meanwhile, the release of Bibas, 35, brought renewed attention to the fate of his wife, Shiri, and their two young sons, Ariel and Kfir, who were 4 years old and 9 months old when they were abducted. All four were captured from Kibbutz Nir Oz.

Kfir was the youngest of about 250 people taken captive on Oct. 7, and his plight quickly came to represent the helplessness and anger the hostage-taking stirred in Israel, where the Bibas family has become a household name.

Hamas has said Shiri and her sons were killed in an Israeli airstrike, but Israel has not confirmed that. Gal Hirsch, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s special coordinator for returning the hostages, said Israel has “grave concern for the lives” of Shiri and her sons, and pleaded with negotiators to provide information on their situation.

Kalderon, 54, was also captured from Kibbutz Nir Oz.

In Kfar Saba, north of Tel Aviv, Kalderon’s family hugged and cheered as they saw the images of him climbing onto the stage in Khan Younis and being transferred to the Red Cross.

“Ofer is coming home!” they said, arms lifted to the sky.

Kalderon’s two children, Erez and Sahar, were abducted alongside him and released during the November 2023 ceasefire. Family members said they weren’t able to recover from their ordeal until their father returned.

“We are sorry it took so long, Ofer,” said Eyal Kalderon. “We will soon be a whole family again. We hope other families will soon feel like this, until the last family.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said France “shares in the relief and joy” of Kalderon’s return after 483 days of “unimaginable hell,” adding that France would continue doing all it can to secure the release of another French Israeli hostage still being held in Gaza.

More than 100 of the hostages abducted on Oct. 7 were released during the weeklong Nov. 2023 ceasefire. About 80 more remain in Gaza, at least a third of them believed dead.

In the Oct. 7 attack that started the war, some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed. More than 47,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory air and ground war, over half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many of the dead were militants.

The Israeli military says it killed over 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence. It blames civilian deaths on Hamas because its fighters operate in residential neighbourhoods.

Isseid contributed from Beitunia, West Bank. Moshe Edri at Reim military base, Israel and Paz Bar in Kfar Saba, Israel, contributed.