TENS of thousands of Palestinians streamed back into the most heavily destroyed part of the Gaza Strip today after Israel lifted its closure of the north for the first time since the early weeks of 15 months of fighting.

This followed United States President Donald Trump being accused of supporting ethnic cleansing for suggesting that Palestinians should be cleared out of Gaza to Egypt and Jordan.

But the Palestinian return to northern Gaza was both tragic — as people encountered their bombed-out homes — and triumphant  as they returned to the soil that many thought they would never see again and as many were reunited with family.

Footage on social media showed massive streams of people of all ages stretched along a main road running next to the coast struggling with their belongings to get back to their homes.

Palestinians who have been sheltering in squalid tent camps and schools-turned-shelters for over a year were eager to return to their homes.

Yasmin Abu Amshah, a mother of three, said she walked around four miles to reach her home in Gaza City, where she found it damaged but still habitable. 

She also saw her younger sister for the first time in over a year.

“It was a long trip, but a happy one,” she said. “The most important thing is that we returned.”

Ismail Abu Matter, a father of four who waited for three days near the crossing point before being allowed by the Israelis to move north with his family, described scenes of jubilation on the other side, with people singing, praying and crying as they were reunited with relatives.

“It’s the joy of return,” said Mr Abu Matter, whose relatives were among the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled or were driven out of what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding its creation. 

“We had thought we wouldn’t return, like our ancestors.”

The opening was delayed for two days over a dispute between Hamas and Israel, which said the resistance group changed the order of the hostages it released in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. Mediators resolved the dispute overnight.

Hamas said the return was “a victory for our people, and a declaration of failure and defeat for the [Israeli] occupation and transfer plans.”

Palestinian ambassador to Britain Husam Zomlot said: “A million Palestinians returning to their destroyed homes and towns in the north of Gaza is the crystal-clear response to those who still plot to uproot us from our homeland. 

“There is only one direction of travel ahead of the Palestinian people after 100 years of forced displacement and oppression: liberation and return!”

Mustafa Barghouti, the founder and leader of the Palestinian National Initiative, said: “Despite death, destruction and collective punishment, hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians return to their destroyed neighbourhoods in north Gaza, defeating the Israeli government’s efforts to conduct ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip. 

“Thousands of Palestinians finally reunified with their families. They return to their destroyed homes fully determined to rebuild their lives and their future of freedom.”

Independent journalist Matt Kennard posted on the X social media platform: “Gaza is the frontline in the defence of civilisation and humanity. It refused to be crushed under the weight of three nuclear-armed powers who threw everything they have at them for 15 months. 

“Its victory is a victory for freedom-loving people everywhere. We owe them. They lead.”

The determined trek home was also seen as a repudiation of Mr Trump’s suggestion that some two million Palestinians should be removed from the enclave to Egypt and Jordan.

Mr Trump described the war-torn territory as a “demolition site” and suggested that Egypt and Jordan should take in the population from Gaza. 

Mr Trump said: “I would like Egypt to take people. You’re talking about probably a million-and-a-half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say: ‘You know, it’s over’.”

He called the Gaza Strip “a real mess.”

Mr Trump said the mass resettlement “could be temporary” or “long term.”

Mr Trump’s scheme has already been rejected by both nations. 

Egypt warned it “risks expanding the conflict in the region and undermines prospects of peace and co-existence among its people.”

Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told journalists that his country’s rejection of the proposed transfer of Palestinians was “firm and unwavering.”

Hamas and the Western-backed Palestinian Authority also both condemned Mr Trump’s remarks. Hamas said it “constitutes a blatant violation of the red lines we have consistently warned against.”

Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, said Mr Trump’s proposal would amount to “an alarming escalation in the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people” and would “exponentially increase their suffering.”

Thomas Juneau, a professor of international affairs at Ottawa University, told CNN that such a move “would be ethnic cleansing, a crime against humanity, and it is insane the US president is casually saying it.”

Independent MP Jeremy Corbyn told the Morning Star: “This is precisely why thousands of us continue to demonstrate. 

“We know that the announcement of a ceasefire is just the beginning — we need to keep pushing for the only path to a just and lasting peace: the end of the occupation of Palestine.”

Communist Party international secretary Kevan Nelson said: “Trump’s comments demonstrate the absolute contempt of the US ruling class for the national rights of the Palestinian people. 

“As well as the hypocrisy of the US claims to be the guardians of democracy and human rights.”

US-based journalist Eugene Puryear said: “Trump’s comments prove the truly bipartisan nature of the US policy of ethnically cleansing Palestinians. US support for Israel knows no bounds, reinforcing, yet again, that Israel is the central pillar of American imperial control in west Asia. 

Mr Puryear added: “US presidents, regardless of party, will do anything to protect it. No matter how genocidal.”

Black Agenda Report executive editor Margaret Kimberley told the Morning Star that Mr Trump’s scheme “threatens to undo the already shaky peace process.”

Ms Kimberley said the growing consensus against the plan “is an indication of the level of cruelty inherent in this proposal which was first floated during the Biden administration.”

“As always, US presidents build on the work of their predecessors,” she added.