Thousands of Palestinians, exhausted by six months of unrelenting war and multiple displacements, trudged back to the devastated city of Khan Younis on Monday, a day after Israel’s unexpected withdrawal of its forces from southern Gaza.
With many making the journey on foot from nearby Rafah, they struggled to find homes that had been atomised by the force of the bombardment in neighbourhoods heavy with the smell of death, where family and neighbours worked to dig out bodies long buried in the rubble.
The retreat of Israel’s 98th division from southern Gaza on Sunday, the day that marked six months since the start of the war, baffled many Israeli commentators, with some suggesting it signalled an end to high-intensity fighting in Gaza.
The departure of the forces now leaves only two Israeli brigades inside Gaza tasked with maintaining the physical separation of the northern and southern halves of the strip.
Video from Khan Younis on Monday showed a landscape of shattered multistorey buildings, some walls defaced by Hebrew graffiti, and people scrambling over debris.
With about 55% of buildings in the city destroyed or damaged, for many returning to their neighbourhoods in Gaza’s second-largest city the experience was emotionally shattering.
“We hoped we would find the house or the remnants of it or take something from it to cover us,” Qandil, 46, one of those who had come back to Khan Younis, told AFP. “We did not find the house.
“In every house there is a martyr, a wounded person. Words cannot describe the magnitude of the devastation and the suffering we experienced. We cried hysterically at the sight of the blood.”
Muhammad Abu Diab, 29, said: “There is nothing left. I cannot bear the sight. I’m going to look in the rubble until I find clothes to wear. I’ll go back and live next to the rubble of my house even if it’s in a tent.
Ahmad Abu al-Rish said: “It’s all just rubble. Animals can’t live here, so how is a human supposed to?”
Israel’s sudden retreat from the city and the wider south has confounded many, after months in which officials said the military’s presence there was designed to put pressure on Hamas to release Israeli hostages.
Although senior Israeli military and political officials said the withdrawal did not mark the end of the conflict or the postponement of Israel’s threatened assault on Rafah, it came alongside conflicting messagesfrom ceasefire talks in Cairo over the weekend, with some describing significant progress.
While Israel’s military said its withdrawal of forces from southern Gaza was merely a regrouping as the army prepared to move into Hamas’s last stronghold, Rafah, the claim was met with some scepticism by Israeli commentators, who saw little evidence of Israeli preparations for a Rafah offensive or for the evacuation of the 1.4 million Palestinians from the city.
Instead, critics of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, claim he is content to continue the war at a far lower intensity and tempo to prolong the conflict and his own political survival.
The suggestion that the withdrawal could signify the war may be winding down sparked alarm among far-right members of Netanyahu’s coalition and newspaper commentators.
Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, warned that “if Netanyahu decides to end the war without an expansive assault in Rafah, he won’t have the mandate to serve as prime minister”.
That sentiment was echoed by his far-right colleague Bezalel Smotrich, who called for an immediate security cabinet meeting to discuss the progress of the war.
Netanyahu appeared to mollify those sentiment on Monday, saying that a date had been set for the invasion of Rafah, but did not give further details.
The senior military correspondent for the rightwing Jerusalem Post, Yonah Jeremy Bob, described the withdrawal of forces from southern Gaza as “stunning”.
“Some political and defence officials tried to offer apologetics for how it was hinted to [be], or consistent with Israel’s strategy to date – but it simply was not,” he said, describing it as an “admission of failure”.
Even Israel Hayom, which for years existed as a mouthpiece for Netanyahu, struggled to believe the official explanation suggesting the withdrawal might be a precursor to a hostages-for-ceasefire deal.
Ariel Kahana wrote: “If we assemble all the pieces of the puzzle that is Israel’s moves in the past day it looks like a final, large and very dangerous and difficult effort to reach a hostage deal is being made.”
Appearing to reinforce that theory, the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said on Monday that “difficult decisions” needed to be made to get the hostages back, adding: “In my opinion we are at a suitable point, but there’s another side that needs to agree to it.”
The White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said the CIA’s director, William Burns, was in Cairo over the weekend and that a hostage release proposal had been presented to Hamas, and that they were now waiting for a response.
Depictions of progress in ceasefire talks over the weekend were categorised by wildly different assessments, with a Hamas official saying on Monday no progress was made, shortly after Egyptian sources said headway had been made on the agenda.
“There is no change in the position of the occupation and therefore, there is nothing new in the Cairo talks,” the Hamas official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters. “There is no progress yet.”
Earlier on Monday, Egypt’s state-affiliated Al-Qahera news channel quoted a senior Egyptian source as saying progress had been made after a deal was reached among participating delegations on issues under discussion.
Agencies contributed to this article
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