They marched for hours in flip-flops and sandals, bags of clothes dangling from the crooks of their elbows. They trudged for miles with toddlers in their arms, mattresses slung from their shoulders. Old men hobbled on crutches, children pushed wheelchairs and one young boy dragged his earthly possessions on a sled.
For nearly 16 months, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from northern Gaza have lived in tents, barred by Israel from returning to their homes after being forced to flee south at the start of its military offensive against Hamas.
On Monday, shortly after sunrise, many thousands of them began the painful trek back. After disagreements between Israel and Hamas delayed their return over the weekend, the Israeli military finally withdrew from Gaza’s coastal road by 7 a.m., allowing displaced people to move north on foot. Car owners were later allowed to drive north along an inland road, subject to inspections.
The pedestrians soon formed a human column that stretched as far as the eye could see — miles in length and some 20 people abreast. Rarely has such an uncomfortable journey felt like such relief.
“We’re so overjoyed,” said Malak al-Haj Ahmed, 17, a high-school student who was taking selfies with her family beside the coastal road. “There’s no moment more joyful than returning home.”
To mark the moment, some people distributed sweets. Some flashed victory signs at passing photographers. A group of small boys led a celebratory chant. “Right or left, north is best,” they sang. “To the north we go!”
For Palestinians, it was a moment steeped in symbolism. Since the foundation of Israel in 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled or fled from their homes in what is known in Arabic as the Nakba, Palestinians have been defined by repeated displacement and exile.
Most Gazans are the descendants of refugees forced to flee in 1948 and many had regarded their displacement from northern Gaza in 2023 as a second Nakba. That fear has been reinforced by repeated Israeli calls to settle northern Gaza with Israeli civilians, as well as President Trump’s suggestion over the weekend that Gazans should move to other parts of the Arab world.
To walk back home against that backdrop, through land from which Israeli soldiers had just retreated, felt to some Palestinians like a dare against their own history.
“We flipped the table on its head,” said Ahmed Shehada, 34, a textile manufacturer who trekked roughly 15 miles in six hours to Gaza City. Unlike many who returned on Monday, he found his home still standing.
“They wanted to expel us from Gaza,” Mr. Shehada said by phone. Instead, he added, “I’m sitting on the couch in my home, and I can’t believe it.”
