News cameras captured endless queues of men, women and children marching along Al-Rashid Road and Salaheddine Road to Gaza City after the start of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas at 0900 GMT.
They marched, some in cars and mostly on foot, carrying whatever belongings they could muster, heading to Gaza City and northern Gaza after months in displaced camps in the centre and the south of the strip.
"Approximately 200,000 people returned to northern Gaza today," said Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the agency.
After heavy Israeli bombardment around Gaza in the morning, the first phase of the ceasefire agreement between Tel Aviv and Hamas, which could end the two-year-old Israeli genocidal war on 2.3 million Palestinians in the strip, came into effect at noon on Friday.
At noon, the Israeli occupation military pulled back its troops to lines inside Gaza agreed on for the first day, withdrawing from much of Gaza City, the southern city of Khan Younis and other areas. Troops remain in most of the southern city of Rafah, the towns of Gaza’s far north and a wide strip along Gaza’s border with Israel.
The Palestinian resistance group is to release the 20 living captives within 72 hours of the Israeli pullback. Israel will release around 2,000 Palestinians, including several hundred serving prison sentences and others seized from Gaza during the war.
Negotiations for the next phases in the ceasefire deal would then begin.
The awesome march on Friday recalls the earlier return of hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians to their homes in the north, including Gaza City, at the start of the 19 January ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, brokered by Egypt, Qatar, and the US.
That return home for thousands of displaced Palestinian families, which entailed a brief respite from the genocide, was short-lived.
On 18 March, Israel unilaterally ended the ceasefire, opting to resume the genocidal war in Gaza with intense airstrikes across the strip.
A month ago, Israel began a mad bombing campaign and a ground invasion of Gaza City to ethnically cleanse more than 1.2 million Palestinians from the north to the south of the strip.
In its assault, the Israeli occupation army destroyed hundreds of residential buildings, including high-rises, and drove out hundreds of thousands from Gaza City and the northern strip.
On Friday, with the first phase of the ceasefire, brokered by Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, and the US, it seemed that Israel had apparently failed to implement its ethnic cleansing plan, as the insistence on return and attachment to the homeland reasserted itself.
Despite Israeli efforts to turn Gaza City into an unlivable hell with the aim of ethnically cleansing its population, more than half a million Gazans remained in Gaza City, defying the siege, starvation, and bombardment.
Today, it appeared that the door has opened for the return of the remaining displaced people across the strip to their destroyed homes to rebuild.
Marchers told reporters they were struggling with mixed feelings of sorrow for the loss of loved ones and joy for returning to rebuild their homes and lives after an end to the Israeli genocidal war.
They came in droves minutes after the Israeli occupation army began its withdrawal to the yellow line under the ceasefire agreement.
The Israeli genocidal war on Gaza, which started on 7 October 2023, has killed and wounded more than 230,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and has reduced most of the strip to rubble.
In tandem, the Israeli blockade on all food, water, and medicine to Gaza has left the population in famine, the first ever in the Middle East.
Last Friday, amid growing international condemnation of the Israeli genocide, Hamas stated its agreement to release all remaining Israeli captives in response to US President Donald Trump's 20-point plan to end the war.
On Wednesday, Israel and the Palestinian resistance group agreed to the Trump plan after intense negotiations through mediators in Sharm El-Sheikh.
In central Gaza, thousands were also returning to towns and cities after the start of the Israeli occupation army's withdrawal from the vicinity of Khan Younis and Deir Balah.
Dozens walked back to their homes southern city of Khan Younis on paths cleared through piles of rubble accumulated from over two years of war and air strikes, an AFP journalist reported.
Destroyed and damaged buildings, their facades torn off by blasts or crumbling upon their foundations, stood on all sides as the returnees walked in the morning sun, shortly after news spread that Israeli forces had withdrawn from parts of Khan Younis.
"We're happy. Even if we return to ruins with no life, at least it's our land," Ameer Abu Iyadeh, a returnee, told AFP.
"We're going back to our areas, full of wounds and sorrow, but we thank God for this situation," he said, smiling, a pink school backpack strapped to his chest, holding a jerrycan full of water in one hand and his young daughter in the other.
"God willing, everyone will return to their areas," the 32-year-old said, while his two other daughters walked by his side, holding hands.
Areej Abu Saadeh, a Palestinian woman who lost a daughter and a son during the war, said she could not wait to get home.
"We've been displaced for two years now, living on the sidewalks with no shelter and nowhere to stay," she told AFP.
"We're now on our way to Bani Suheila, running -- I just want to reach my place," she said, referring to her town east of Khan Younis.
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