Following the latest hostage-for-prisoner exchange under the current ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, the Israeli military withdrew from the strategic Netzarim Corridor in the Gaza Strip on Sunday.

The corridor divides the coastal strip into northern and southern halves. The army’s departure means internally displaced people can return from the south of the Gaza Strip to their largely destroyed homes in the north in even greater numbers than before.

The Islamist Palestinian group Hamas celebrated the withdrawal of troops from the corridor as a “victory” for the Palestinian people and a defeat for Israel.

Israel had already begun withdrawing from parts of the Netzarim Corridor after the current ceasefire with Hamas took effect on January 19. Under the agreement, the army was expected to vacate the area entirely, except for a one-kilometre-wide buffer zone along the Israeli border.

Hamas released three more hostages from captivity in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, followed by the release of dozens of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. It was the fifth such swap.

The hostages – named as Eli Sharabi, Or Levy and Ohad Ben Ami – were paraded in front of a crowd in central Gaza by Hamas fighters.

The men were made to speak into a microphone on a stage before being handed over to the Red Cross. They were then transferred to the Israeli military and were reunited with their families in Israel.

Palestinians: Israeli troops kill four in Gaza despite ceasefire

sraeli soldiers have shot dead four people in the northern Gaza Strip despite the current ceasefire, according to Palestinian officials on Sunday.

Three young men were killed in the al-Zaytun district of Gaza City, officials of the Hamas-controlled civil defence said.

Residents told dpa by phone that the victims had filmed Israeli military units near the border fence with Israel, whereupon the soldiers had opened fire.

An elderly woman was also shot dead as she tried to reach her house in the south of the Gaza Strip, reported the Ministry of Health, which is also controlled by Hamas.

The Israeli military told dpa that soldiers in northern Gaza opened fire on several suspects who had approached their positions. There had been hits and the suspects had then retreated, officials said.

The army again called on all residents of the Gaza Strip not to approach Israeli troops under any circumstances.

The statements by both sides could not initially be independently verified.

The Gaza war started on October 7, 2023, after gunmen of Hamas and allied groups killed around 1,200 people in southern Israel and abducted around 250 people to the coastal strip.

According to Palestinian data, more than 48,000 Palestinians, mainly civilians, died in the following 15 months of fighting between Hamas and Israel.

A ceasefire, initially agreed for six weeks, has been in place since January 19.

Cairo to host meeting on Gaza‘s future

Meanwhile, Egypt said on Sunday it would host an emergency Arab summit later this month, after US President Donald Trump floated a plan to takeover the Gaza Strip and displace hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the war-devastated territory to other countries.

The summit will be held in Cairo on February 27 to discuss the “latest and serious developments” of the Palestinian issue, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a brief statement.

Following a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House last week, Trump said the US would take over Gaza, which he said could become “the Riviera of the Middle East.”

He did not say how he would relocate some 2 million Palestinians from their land or where they would go, though he had previously asked Egypt and Jordan to take them in. Both countries, as well as many other Arab and Western nations, rejected and criticized Trump’s idea.

Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979. Egypt along with the US and Qatar brokered the current ceasefire deal.