TRANSCRIPT
Joy and relief, pain and heartbreak.
The first phase of the truce between the Israeli Government and Hamas has been a reckoning for millions of citizens impacted by the past 15 months of war in Gaza.
This week as some reunite - others will never be whole again.
In Israel, dozens of families have been desperately waiting to see loved ones, after the first seven female hostages were returned this month.
Now, the devastating news eight have died before they could come home.
Shira Yalon Chamovitz is waiting anxiously, staging a silent protest with others who have family in Hamas captivity.
"it's not enough. We're waiting for everybody. We're waiting for the kids, we're were waiting for the adults, we're were waiting for the men. They are all held in Gaza in horrible conditions. And we are all here sitting quietly to say, to shout that they all need to come back to us.''
Six more hostages are scheduled for release this week.
Israeli authorities say 90 remain in Hamas custody.
On International Holocaust Memorial Day, Israel's President Isaac Herzog, whose role is largely ceremonial - spoke at the UN General Assembly Hall.
"We call on all representatives in this General Assembly, all who consider themselves part of the civilised world, to throw their weight to ensure our hostages return home. Every single one of them. Bring them back home now."
In Gaza, emotions are also running high.
After being forced apart by war, twin brothers Ibrahim and Mahmoud Al Tout sobbed and fell to the ground as they hugged each other, reunited at last in Gaza City.
“My brother, my brother.. I missed you, I missed you my brother. Stand up now."
Behind the brothers, crowds of Palestinians were seen carrying their belongings - and even tiny children - as they made their way along kilometres of rubble to northern Gaza and Gaza City.
As the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas holds, an expected 650 thousand Palestinians will make journey north, hoping for their own reunions.
An exhausted 19 year-old Mohammed Adas is one of them.
"I haven’t seen my family for a year and a half, I want to go back to see them. I've been waiting for three days to go to my parents. We are tired, I want to go to Gaza City, we're not coming back here."
Not all have a home to return to.
And in East Jerusalem, tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees' access to healthcare and education is in doubt after this week.
The Netanyahu Government has ordered a United Nation's aid agency to leave the area and the people it had been serving for decades.
The UN Relief and Works Agency's spokesman Jonathan Fowler, says it's an unacceptable decision.
"There's all kinds of rumors that have been sort of floating around, some probably rumors which have been a little bit cultivated in order to to seem like solutions have been invented. But the people that we serve, the many tens of thousands of people that we serve across, you know, East Jerusalem and then more in the West Bank, you know, notably in education and health care. We're not able to tell them what is going to happen as of as of the end of this week."
Manal Alkhayat, the head of nursing for the charity at its clinic in Old Jerusalem, says 30 thousand people will lose access to vital medical care.
"Those patients and refugees who have diabetes and blood pressure, the kids who needs vaccines who I help and the pregnant women who I help where they will go? Where they will go? Where they will get their medicine from?”
While the truce is underway in the Gaza strip, raids continue in the West Bank.
An Israeli air strike on a vehicle in the built-up Nur Shams refugee camp killed two people and left three others wounded.
South Africa has lodged a claim against Israel to the International Court of Justice, accusing Israel of committing genocide in its response to the attack by Hamas on Southern Israel in 2023.
