Updates: Israel-Hamas ceasefire holds, people return to north Gaza ruins

For a look at the tens of thousands of Palestinians streaming back into northern Gaza, check out our photo gallery here.

This story explains how, despite the ceasefire coming into effect, activists have renewed their calls to ban Israel from European football over the atrocities committed in Gaza.

Meanwhile, protests in support of Palestinians continue around the world, including in London. See more in this story from the UK capital.

We will soon be closing this live page. Here’s a look at the day’s top developments:

• Thousands of Palestinians continue to head back to their homes in northern Gaza, but most have found only rubble and decimated neighbourhoods as a result of Israel’s intense bombardment.
• The Palestinian Civil Defence in Gaza says at least 150 bodies have been retrieved across the territory since Friday morning as the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas continues to hold.
• Israel has begun transferring Palestinian prisoners to two jails before their release as part of the ceasefire deal, which will also see the release of Israeli captives held in Gaza.
• Egypt has confirmed that US President Trump with co-chair a Gaza summit on Monday in the Egyptian town of Sharm el-Sheikh, with UN chief Antonio Guterres and the leaders of more than 20 countries expected to attend.

We are told that there were conversations between the US state secretary and his Egyptian counterpart. They discussed this unprecedented heads of state meeting, which will be chaired jointly by the Egyptian president and US President Donald Trump, the Egyptian presidency says.

What we understand as well from the Egyptian presidential website, more than 20 heads of state are expected to attend.

Separately, it’s been confirmed that the presidents of France and Italy will be there. And a statement now from the United Nations says that the secretary-general will be travelling in the next 24 hours to attend that summit as well.

A full list of summit participants is not clear at this particular point, and it is also not clear whether Israel will be taking part in that summit meeting. But certainly, this is an unprecedented gathering of state leaders to discuss the imposition and the execution of this 20-point plan.

One must continue to stress that this goes way beyond a ceasefire.

Eyal Weizman, who heads the UK-based research group Forensic Architecture, says the so-called “yellow line” to which Israeli forces have withdrawn under the ceasefire deal roughly matches Gaza’s “coastal sand dune”.

That leaves Gaza “without the absolute majority of its agricultural areas on the fertile soils in the east”.

An August report from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization found that, as of July 28, more than 86 percent of Gaza’s cropland – totalling nearly 13,000 hectares (32,000 acres) – was damaged by Israel’s war on the enclave.

You can see more about how Israel destroyed Palestinians’ ability to feed themselves in our interactive report from July 2024, here.

This aerial image from the 1960s shows that the 'yellow line' of Israel's redeployment in Gaza is roughly matching with the border of the area's coastal sand dune, leaving Gaza without the absolute majority of its agricultural areas on the fertile soils in the east. pic.twitter.com/pwZLO5OyeO

— eyal weizman (@weizman_eyal) October 11, 2025

We reported earlier, based on the Israeli army, that the US special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, visited Gaza alongside Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and CENTCOM chief Brad Cooper.

Now, Witkoff confirmed the visit in a statement on X, saying he went “to verify Israel’s compliance with Phase I of the [Gaza ceasefire] agreement”.

“We received detailed briefings on security, humanitarian aid, and deconfliction efforts,” he said. “With continued commitment, peace remains within reach.”

Admiral Cooper, Jared Kushner and I traveled to Gaza today to verify Israel’s compliance with Phase I of the agreement. We received detailed briefings on security, humanitarian aid, and deconfliction efforts. With continued commitment, peace remains within reach. pic.twitter.com/a3L5TqyW0k

— Special Envoy Steve Witkoff (@SEPeaceMissions) October 11, 2025

A spokesman for the Egyptian presidency says the meeting on Monday afternoon, called the Sharm el-Sheikh Peace Summit, will be cochaired by the Egyptian and US presidents.

“The summit aims to end the war in the Gaza Strip, enhance efforts to achieve peace and stability in the Middle East, and usher in a new era of regional security and stability,” the spokesman said in a statement shared on Facebook.

The statement also highlighted Trump’s “relentless efforts” to end conflicts around the world.

The US president, who has billed himself as a global peacemaker, had hoped his Gaza plan would get him a Nobel Peace Prize. But the award, announced on Friday, went to a Venezuelan opposition leader.

The Israeli military says it has identified two suspected smugglers “in the area of the Egyptian border within Israeli territory”.

In a statement, the military said the suspects tried to “ram the soldiers” with their car as they were trying to thwart the alleged smuggling.

“The troops neutralised one of the suspects and apprehended the other,” it said, adding that no Israeli soldier was injured.

“The apprehended suspect was transferred to security forces for further processing,” the army said.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians are streaming back to northern Gaza as a right of return is included in the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel.

Multiple attempts to remove the population have failed, but the land Palestinians are returning to is unrecognisable.

Is Gaza uninhabitable? Can it be rebuilt under the interim authority that next governs the Strip? And does the ceasefire allow for this complex and lengthy task?

See more in our video below:

The pattern of devastation and destruction feeds into one conclusion: Make the whole place unliveable by removing the population. Create very difficult conditions on the ground, so they can pack up and leave.

That’s exactly the results that we are seeing.

But despite all of this, we’ve seen people walking back. When we talk to them, they tell us that they don’t have any other options but to go back to their homes because they belong to this area.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says Tehran does not trust Israel to respect the terms of the ceasefire, which came into effect on Friday.

“We warn about the tricks and betrayals of the Zionist regime [Israel] regarding previous agreements. … There is absolutely no trust in the Zionist regime,” Araghchi said.

He added that Israel violated previous ceasefires, including in Lebanon.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has called for the deployment of international forces in the Gaza Strip to guarantee an end to the Israeli war on the enclave.

Speaking during a phone call with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides, el-Sisi emphasised the need for the Gaza ceasefire to receive international legitimacy through the UN Security Council, the presidency said in a statement.

He stressed the importance of the deal in halting the war, securing the release of captives, ensuring the entry of humanitarian aid and initiating the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip.

Antoine Renard, World Food Programme representative and country director for Palestine, says in the north of Gaza, they managed to have one of their teams do reconnaissance for ordnance at the Zikim crossing to check if it can be used to bring in goods.

“What is most important now for us to reach the north is crossings to be opened,” Renard told Al Jazeera from Deir el-Balah.

He explained that in the January ceasefire, the WFP enabled “practically a third of all the different goods that managed to enter into Gaza”.

“The conditions should be the same [now]. We expect that the good practices that we had in January 2025 will be again applied in this ceasefire,” Renard said.

“In the last two months, we’ve been bringing more volume into Gaza, but it was insufficient. We were covering only 40-45 percent of the staple food that was in Gaza … We need now to have the full 62,000 metric tonnes getting every month into the Gaza Strip,” he added.

Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, has affirmed the group’s commitment to provide relief to people in Gaza “despite the massive destruction caused by the war of extermination and despite the lack of all components of normal life in the Strip”.

In a statement, al-Rishq said Hamas is continuing its efforts by communicating with “various friendly countries and parties” to ensure the entry of aid and relief into the enclave and “following up on obligating the occupation to implement all provisions of the agreement to ensure recovery, reconstruction, and the return of a decent life for all our great Palestinian people”.

Rajagopal, the UN special rapporteur on housing, has stressed that Palestinians in Gaza will be forced to cope with the lasting psychological effects of seeing their homes and entire communities destroyed across the enclave.

“Home is far more than four walls and a roof. Home is basically a repository of peoples’ hopes and aspirations and dreams and particularly, memories … Those are the things that make people into humans ultimately,” he told Al Jazeera.

“What happens when homes are destroyed on a massive scale and an entire community is forced to flee or scatter to the wind, is that it destroys the possibility of the members of the community becoming human again.

“The psychological impacts and trauma are profound, and that’s what we are seeing right now as people are returning to northern Gaza.”

He added that the recovery process will likely take generations. “It’s like another Nakba,” said Rajagopal, referring to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine when Israel was created in 1948, which still affects Palestinians today.

“What has happened in the last two years is going to be something similar.”

Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, says the destruction of homes in Gaza has been a central component of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in the territory.

Rajagopal, who has used the term “domicide” to describe the decimation of homes across the Strip, told Al Jazeera that the Israeli government’s goal has been to render it uninhabitable.

“Ninety-two percent of homes have been destroyed,” he said. “Even as people are streaming back to northern Gaza – which is actually destroyed far more than southern Gaza – all they’re finding is rubble.

“So the immediate question is, where can they live? Is the territory inhabitable? And the answer plainly is that it is not, and that is exactly the goal of Israel – to destroy everything,” said Rajagopal.

He added that tents and caravans must be allowed into Gaza immediately to provide shelter for displaced Palestinians, hundreds of thousands of whom have been forced out of their homes in Israel’s two-year assault.