“To the hostages themselves, our brothers and sisters, you are coming home,” Witkoff told the crowd estimated in the hundreds of thousands, who shouted, “Thank you Trump”.

“We finally feel hope, but we cannot and will not stop now,” added Zairo Shachar Mohr Munder, whose uncle Abraham was abducted during the October 7 Hamas attack and his body recovered in August.

When will the hostages be released?

“According to the signed agreement, the prisoner exchange is set to begin on Monday morning as agreed,” Hamas official Osama Hamdan told AFP in an interview.

Israel will free about 250 Palestinians serving prison sentences as well as about 1,700 people seized from the Gaza Strip over the past two years and held without charge.

‘Will we live 20 years in a tent?’

Drone footage shot by AFP showed whole city blocks reduced to a twisted mess of concrete and steel reinforcing wire.

Many Gazans came back to their homes reduced to rubble. Source: AFP / -/AFP

“We walked for hours, and every step was filled with fear and anxiety for my home,” Raja Salmi, 52, told AFP.

“I stood before it and cried. All those memories are now just dust,” she said.

Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed at least 67,682 people, according to the Gaza health ministry.

Trump’s peace summit

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said he will attend, as has Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer, his counterparts from Italy and Spain, Giorgia Meloni and Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón, and French President Emmanuel Macron.