Crowds of joyous Palestinians stream into northern Gaza — though uncertainty awaits them

From early Monday morning and hours afterward, crowds of Palestinians filled Gaza’s main coastal road for kilometers (miles) as they streamed north. With their belongings on their backs, they smiled, hugged and sang, overjoyed at the prospect of returning home after more than a year of war.

Associated Press photos, videos and drone footage show tens of thousands making their way on foot along the road. On one side was the Mediterranean Sea; on the other stretched a landscape of destroyed buildings and bulldozed land left behind by withdrawing Israeli forces.

Families carried bags of belongings and rolled up blankets. On their shoulders, men carried young children — or sacks of food and metal cannisters of cooking gas. Women balanced infants in their arms with satchels of clothes and jugs of water. A little girl dressed in teddy-bear pyjamas held her younger sister's hand as they trailed their mother. A teenager strapped a pet carrier to his chest with his cat inside.

Ahead of the returning Palestinians lies an uncertain fate. Many of their homes were destroyed as more than 15 months of Israeli bombardment and ground offensive against Hamas have leveled large parts of Gaza City and the surrounding north.

Still, the mood was celebratory — a sharp contrast to the fear and shock expressed by Palestinians over the past year as they were driven south along this same route to escape Israel's offensive. Many on Monday were smiling. A child waved a “V-for-victory” sign. Two friends hugged in a reunion.

One had fled from the north early in Israel’s campaign. The other, who had stayed behind, came out to the coastal road to greet his friend. “Thank God, we meet again after 470 days,” he said.

One old woman being pushed in a wheelchair sang a traditional Palestinian song of perseverance dating back to what they call the Nakba — the 1948 expulsion and dispersal of Palestinians from their homes during the war surrounding Israel’s creation.

“Stand by each other, people of Palestine, stand by each other. Palestine is gone, but it has not bid you a final farewell,” she sang with a smile on her face. Then she added, “Thank God, we’re returning to our homes, after suffering so much ruin and hunger and disease.”

The crowds crossed the Netzarim corridor, a swath of land across the breadth of the Gaza Strip that Israeli forces turned into a military zone as they sealed off the north and ordered Palestinians to flee for their own safety. The north was the site of the most intense fighting, often in densely populated areas where Israel alleged the militants hid among civilians.

Throughout the war, Palestinians could cross the corridor heading south, but they were barred from returning north.

Now, Hamas fighters were visible in some spots along the highway as the crowds passed, a sign of the militant group's surviving power in Gaza despite Israel's vows to eliminate it.

Under the ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel, Israeli forces pulled back from the two main highways leading north through the Netzarim corridor to allow Palestinians to return. On Salaheddin Street, the main road through central Gaza, cars and trucks heading north were piled with mattresses and other belongings.