Sisi and Trump chair the Gaza summit in Egypt on Monday Gaza News

Donald Trump and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi will chair an international summit to discuss the US President’s proposal to end the Israeli war on Gaza in Sharm El-Sheikh on Monday.

The Egyptian presidency said in a statement on Saturday that the meeting will include leaders of more than 20 countries.

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The statement stated that the summit aims to “end the war in the Gaza Strip and strengthen efforts to achieve peace and stability in the Middle East and enter into a new era of regional security and stability.”

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that they would attend, along with Italian Giorgia Meloni and Spaniard Pedro Sanchez. French President Emmanuel Macron also confirmed his attendance.

It was not immediately clear whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or any representative of the Palestinian Hamas movement would attend.

The announcement comes as tens of thousands of Palestinians stream north along the Gaza coast, on foot, in cars and in vehicles, to their abandoned and destroyed homes in the Strip, at a time when the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas appears to be holding.

Israeli forces partially withdrew under the first phase of a US-brokered agreement reached this week to end the Israeli war on Gaza, which has killed more than 67,000 people and left much of the famine-stricken enclave in ruins.

Hani Mahmoud, Al Jazeera’s correspondent from Gaza City, said that the ceasefire “ended a form of violence, but the struggle continues.”

“People are making this exhausting and tiring journey to return here (in the north) because they belong here,” Mahmoud said. “They keep telling us that they belong to this part of the Palestinian territories in the Gaza Strip, and they will never be uprooted from here.”

“But spending a night here would be very difficult,” he added. “The struggle for survival continues to appear in a more aggressive way, not every day but every hour.”

The government media office in Gaza said that 5,000 public operations were carried out after the ceasefire came into effect to improve the lives of Palestinians in the Strip.

Among them are more than 850 rescue and relief missions carried out by civil defense in Gaza and police and municipal teams to recover bodies, remove rubble, and secure devastated areas.

Civil Defense said that about 150 bodies had been recovered from different areas throughout the enclave since Friday morning. Separately, Nasser Hospital reported that 28 bodies were recovered in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip alone.

The agency added that more than 900 service tasks were carried out to restore water and sewer lines.

These tasks are being carried out with minimal resources in light of the ongoing blockade imposed by Israel on Gaza, which restricts the entry of fuel and equipment. During the genocide, Israeli attacks destroyed ambulances, fire trucks and civil defense centres, paralyzing emergency and recovery efforts throughout the Strip.

The mayor of Khan Yunis said that 85% of the southern Gaza governorate was destroyed as a result of the Israeli attacks, adding that about 400,000 tons of rubble must be removed from the city’s streets.

Calls to open the crossings

Aid groups also urged Israel to reopen more crossings to allow aid into Gaza.

The World Food Program said it is ready to restore 145 food distribution points across the Strip, as soon as Israel allows deliveries to expand. Before Israel completely closed the Gaza Strip in March, UN agencies provided food at 400 distribution points.

“What is most important now for us to reach the north is opening the crossings,” Antoine Renard, World Food Program representative and country director for Palestine, told Al Jazeera from Deir al-Balah.

He explained that in the previous ceasefire in January, the World Food Program enabled “practically a third of all the various goods that were able to enter Gaza.”

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

Izzat Al-Rishq, a member of the Hamas political bureau, said that the movement is working with “friendly countries” to ensure the entry of aid into Gaza, “despite the massive destruction caused by the war.”

UNICEF spokeswoman Tess Ingram said Saturday that the children’s agency expects a significant increase in supplies of high-energy food for malnourished children, menstrual hygiene supplies and tents, starting Sunday.

Meanwhile, US President Trump said Israeli prisoners held by Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza are expected to “return” on Monday, with 20 living captives and the bodies of 28 others scheduled to be handed over as part of a ceasefire agreement.

In return, Israel is scheduled to release about 250 Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons, in addition to about 1,700 people arrested from Gaza during the past two years of the war and detained without charge. The Israeli Prison Service said that the detainees were transferred to deportation facilities in Ofer and Katziot prisons, “awaiting instructions from the political level.”

In previous exchanges, Israel delayed the release of Palestinian prisoners and subjected them to harsh treatment, including physical assault, humiliation and restrictions on family contact, before eventually releasing them. Human rights groups have documented numerous cases of Palestinians arriving in poor sanitary conditions after lengthy interrogations and detention without charge or trial.

In Tel Aviv, tens of thousands of people gathered in Hostage Square after two years of protests led by family members of the prisoners to demand their return.

Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his daughter, Ivanka Trump, took to the stage with the US envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, who played a major role in the ceasefire negotiations.

“I dreamed about this night. It’s been a long journey,” Witkoff said. Some shouted: “Thank you Trump, thank you Witkoff,” and booed when the envoy mentioned Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Looking at the captives, Witkoff said: “As you return to the embrace of your families and your nation, know that all of Israel and the whole world are ready to welcome you home with open arms and endless love.”

Al Jazeera’s Hamda Salhout said that the families of the Israeli prisoners give credit to Trump for the deal, not Netanyahu.

Salhut said: “The family members of the prisoners have no confidence in their government, and they do not trust the Israeli Prime Minister, whom they accused of prolonging the war for his own personal and political gains.”

“The chants (for Trump) and for Steve Witkoff are coming because family members and those protesting say this happened because of Americans.”