By Helen Regan, Lucas Lilieholm, Abeer Salman, Tareq Alhelou and Ivana Kottasová

(CNN) — Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians began returning home to northern Gaza on Monday, bracing for what awaits them in a region that has been reduced to rubble by months of brutal bombardment and fighting.

Israel opened a corridor into the north of the Gaza Strip on Monday, 48 hours later than initially planned. It blamed the delay on Hamas, saying the militant group breached the terms of the ceasefire agreement that guaranteed people would be able to return to the north.

Israel expected Hamas to free Arbel Yehud, a female civilian hostage, in the second round of hostage releases on Saturday. When it didn’t, Israel delayed the opening of the Netzarim corridor that bisects the strip, refusing to let people into northern Gaza. Hamas then agreed to release more hostages, including Yehud, on Thursday and Saturday, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said Sunday.

Israel said Yehud should have been released on Saturday as Hamas is obliged to release civilians first. The four hostages released over the weekend were all female members of the Israeli military.

More than 300,000 displaced Palestinians have returned to the northern Gaza Strip since Israel reopened the corridor, according to the Government Media Office in Gaza.

Seen from above, the crowds on Monday resembled a huge, slow moving wave making its way up Gaza’s coast, then turning inland. Most, including children, injured people and the elderly, were traveling on foot, carrying the little they have left on their backs. Most have spent many months exiled in makeshift refugee camps after Israeli forces ordered large-scale evacuations. They had been praying for this moment for months.

One woman told CNN her son was going to see his home – Gaza City – for the first time.

“He was born in Khan Younis. It’s an indescribable feeling that I am going back to Gaza City. It used to take us 10 minutes to get there, but this time it took a year and a half,” she said, adding that she would “kiss the walls and the ground” upon her return.

“May this be the end of the war, and may the ceasefire last… I gave birth in Khan Younis, and my husband is missing,” she said.

Many people have been waiting for weeks for this moment, spending the past few days sitting out in the streets or on the beach with their mattresses, belongings and water tanks, waiting for the checkpoint to open.

Eyad Al Masri, who was displaced from Beit Hanoun, told CNN he was detained by Israel when fleeing the north and spent 75 days in Israeli prisons. He said one of his sons has been killed in the war and another one has been missing since February.

“I have no money or anything,” he said in Al-Mawasi, southern Gaza, while dismantling the tent his family has been living in. “I’m taking these four bags and going back to my house. I don’t know if it is still standing or not; I am going back to Beit Hanoun.”

Nadia Qassem, from Al-Shati Refugee Camp, told CNN, “we have been waiting for this day for so long.”

“We want to return home… Even though my house is destroyed. I miss my land and my place,” she said.

But the return home will likely be marked by more heartbreak.

“I’m going home, but I wish I weren’t,” Saadiya AbdulAl told CNN while traveling to north with an overflowing donkey cart. “My children are gone, and we are all devastated. None of my family members are left; they all became martyrs in Gaza City. Who do I go back to? I have no house and no one,” she said.

Gaza City, where most of the people making this journey on Monday had been living before the war, is among the most destroyed areas in the strip. There are no fully functioning hospitals or schools in the area and access to water, power and basic supplies is extremely limited, despite aid flows into Gaza increasing since the ceasefire came into effect.

The Israeli military said residents could return on foot along the Al Rasheed coastal road, while vehicle traffic can pass via the inland Salah al-Din road after inspection.

The Al Rasheed coastal road was damaged during the war and remains difficult to pass in some places. At some points, people visibly struggled to get through, with wheelchairs and strollers getting stuck in the deep sand.

Subhiyeh Mohammad was walking bent forward, dragging a small bundle made of a blanket through the dirt behind her. “Our children are gone, our husbands are gone, our homes are destroyed. I can’t carry much; I’m a dialysis patient. I only took what I sleep on,” the elderly woman told CNN.

Armed fighters from the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, were seen among the civilians, wearing their distinct green headbands. Some of those walking past cheered, some posed for photos with the masked fighters.

“We will continue to firmly enforce the ceasefires in the north and south,” Defense Minister Israel Katz wrote in a post on X. “Anyone who violates the rules or threatens (the Israel Defense Forces) will bear the full cost.”

Hamas in a statement praised the return of the displaced as “a victory for our people, and a declaration of the failure and defeat of the occupation and its displacement plans.”

Israel’s far-right former national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, who quit in protest over the ceasefire and hostage release deal, claimed the return of Palestinians to northern Gaza was a “total surrender.”

Fragile truce threatened by tensions

Escalated tensions over Yehud’s release had threatened to derail the already fragile truce.

They heightened further on Saturday after President Donald Trump said he had discussed his plan to “clean out” Gaza with the king of Jordan and intended to raise the matter with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

The US president said he would like both Jordan and Egypt – which borders Gaza – to house hundreds of thousands of Palestinians either temporarily or “long term,” telling reporters onboard Air Force One, “because I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now and it’s a mess, it’s a real mess.”

“It’s literally a demolition site right now,” Trump said of Gaza. “I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing in a different location where I think they could maybe live in peace for a change.”

Both Jordan and Egypt rejected Trump’s idea to shift Palestinians out of the enclave, saying such a move would displace Palestinians from their homeland. Trump’s comments were also strongly condemned by Palestinian leaders and human rights groups, who denounced the forced relocation of residents as ethnic cleansing and a possible war crime.

Trump’s comments appear to break with decades of US foreign policy, which has long emphasized a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.

Dana Stroul, former assistant deputy secretary of defense for the Middle East, told CNN that Trump’s proposal “feeds this narrative” that what Israel and the US really want “is not a Palestinian state living next to Israel, but actually to force them somewhere else.”

Specter of further mass displacement

Trump’s idea to ultimately move Gaza’s residents to another country has only raised fears of further mass displacement among Palestinians.

The Palestinian Presidency said the plan “constitutes a blatant violation of red lines Palestinian leadership have consistently warned about.”

“The Palestinian people will never abandon their lands or their Holy Sites, and will not allow the repetition of the Nakba of 1948 and Naksa 1967,” the presidency said.

The movement of Palestinian refugees out of Gaza would evoke painful memories of the mass displacement that accompanied the creation of Israel in 1948. There are some 5.9 million Palestinian refugees worldwide, most of them descendants of the 700,000 people who were expelled or fled their homes during the Nakba, or catastrophe.

Hundreds of thousands more were displaced during the 1967 war, when Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan and Gaza from Egypt.

There are fears that if carried out, Trump’s plan would bring an end to any future prospect of Palestinian-Israeli peace based on a two-state solution.

Hamas in a statement said it will “categorically reject any plans to deport and displace them from their land,” and called on the US administration to “stop these proposals.”

Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad also condemned Trump’s “reprehensible statements” and called the proposal “a continuation of the policy of denying the existence of the Palestinian people, their will and their rights.”

Human rights groups have also denounced the idea.

Human Rights Watch’s Israel and Palestine Director Omar Shakir said in a post on X that it “would amount to an alarming escalation in the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and exponentially increase their suffering.”

US-based advocacy group the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR), said Trump’s idea was “delusional and dangerous nonsense.”

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