By Chloe Rouveyrolles-Bazire and Didier Lauras with Youssef Hassouna in Gaza City and Adel Zaanoun in Cairo

JERUSALEM – A fragile ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war was holding Monday (20), following the exchange of three hostages for 90 Palestinian prisoners in an agreement aimed at ending more than 15 months of war in Gaza.

The three Israeli hostages released Sunday (19), all women, were reunited with their families and taken to a hospital in central Israel, where a doctor said they were in stable condition.

Hours later in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Palestinian prisoners released by Israel left Ofer prison on buses, with jubilant crowds celebrating their arrival.

As the ceasefire took effect, thousands of displaced, war-weary Palestinians set off across the devastated Gaza Strip to return home.

The truce began on the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration for a second term as US president. Trump has claimed credit for the agreement after months of fruitless negotiations.

If all goes according to plan, the first phase of the truce would last six weeks during which the parties would negotiate a permanent ceasefire, which has not been agreed yet.

Despite the risks, hundreds of Palestinians were streaming through an apocalyptic landscape in Jabalia in northern Gaza, one of the worst-hit areas in the war.

“We are finally in our home. There is no home left, just rubble, but it’s our home,” said Rana Mohsen, 43.

The initial 42-day truce was brokered by mediators Qatar, the United States and Egypt.

It should enable a surge of sorely needed humanitarian aid into Gaza, as more Israeli hostages are released in exchange for Palestinians in Israeli custody and Israeli forces leave some areas.

During the initial phase of the truce, 33 Israeli hostages are due to be returned from Gaza in exchange for around 1,900 Palestinians.

– Reunited –

The first three released hostages, Emily Damari, Romi Gonen and Doron Steinbrecher, returned to Israel after Hamas fighters handed them over to the Red Cross in a bustling square in Gaza City, surrounded by gunmen in fatigues and balaclavas.

“In Emily’s own words, she is the happiest girl in the world; she has her life back,” Damari’s mother Mandy said on Monday, adding that her daughter was “doing much better than any of us could have expected” even after losing two fingers.

Damari, a British-Israeli dual national, was at home in Kfar Aza in southern Israel when Hamas gunmen stormed the area on October 7, 2023, injuring her hands and legs and taking her hostage.

Steinbrecher’s family said in a statement that “our heroic Dodo, who survived 471 days in Hamas captivity, begins her rehabilitation journey today”.

In Tel Aviv, there was elation among the crowd who had waited for hours for the news of their release, with the Hostages and Missing Families Forum campaign group hailing their return as “a beacon of light”.

On Monday, however, there was anxiety in Israel over the next phases of the truce, with columnist Sima Kadmon warning in the Yedioth Ahronoth daily that the coming hostage releases may be more painful.

“Some of them will arrive on gurneys and wheelchairs. Others will arrive in coffins. Some will arrive wounded and injured, in dire emotional condition,” she wrote.

Journalist Avi Issacharoff, one of the creators of the hit series Fauda, lashed out against the Israeli government for what he said was its failure “to engage in any way on the ‘day after’ the war”.

Following the return of the three hostages, the Israel Prison Service confirmed the release of 90 Palestinian prisoners early Monday.

In the West Bank town of Beitunia, near Ofer prison, Palestinians cheered and chanted as buses carrying prisoners arrived, with some climbing atop and unfurling a Hamas flag.

“All the prisoners being released today feel like family to us. They are part of us, even if they’re not blood relatives,” Amanda Abu Sharkh, 23, told AFP.

One freed detainee, Abdul Aziz Muhammad Atawneh, described the prison as “hell, hell, hell”.

The next hostage-prisoner swap should take place on Saturday, a senior Hamas official told AFP.

International Committee of the Red Cross president Mirjana Spoljaric called on all sides to “adhere to their commitments to ensure the next operations can take place safely”.

– ‘Rise again’ –

UN relief chief Tom Fletcher said 630 trucks carrying desperately needed aid had entered into Gaza in the hours after the start of the truce, with 300 of them headed to the north of the territory.

Qatar said that 12.5 million litres of fuel would enter Gaza over the first 10 days of the truce.

The war has devastated much of the Palestinian territory and displaced the vast majority of its population of 2.4 million, but Hamas on Monday vowed that Gaza and its people would “rise again”.

“Gaza, with its great people and its resilience, will rise again to rebuild what the occupation has destroyed,” Hamas said in a statement.

The World Food Program said it was moving full throttle to get food to as many Gazans as possible.

“We’re trying to reach a million people within the shortest possible time,” said the agency’s deputy executive director, Carl Skau.

The war’s only previous truce, for one week in November 2023, also saw the release of hostages held by militants in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.

Hamas’s October 7 attack, the deadliest in Israel’s history, resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Of the 251 people taken hostage, 91 are still in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Sunday that the death toll in the war between Israel and Hamas had reached 46,913.

– Agence France-Presse