Thousands of people traveled by foot toward Gaza City on Saturday as a cease-fire held overnight, but early accounts described devastation across the area.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe scale of destruction is really staggering,\u201d said Olga Cherevko, a spokeswoman for the United Nations\u2019 humanitarian office, who visited the city this week. \u201cWe have a lot of people moving north to Gaza City and arriving to find the ruins where their homes used to be, so there is a lot of conflicted emotion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mediators hope the cease-fire, which began at noon Friday, will lead to the end of two years of war as the first phase of a 20-point peace plan presented in September by President Trump.<\/p>\n
A summit in support of the peace proposal will be held on Monday in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, and chaired by Mr. Trump and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, according to a statement from the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. President Emmanuel Macron of France and Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain will also attend the summit, according to statements from their respective governments.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump was also expected to visit Israel\u2019s Parliament in Jerusalem on Monday, according to a spokesman for the chamber.<\/p>\n
In Gaza, joy at the pause in fighting has been tempered by the scale of destruction that many face as they return to the north. Hundreds of thousands of people fled Gaza City last month as Israel began a ground offensive there.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re back in our city, but it doesn\u2019t feel like it,\u201d said Manal Muftah, 33. \u201cWe lost everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said she was a baker before the war and hoped to rebuild her business if the cease-fire turned into lasting peace. But the day when things would return to how they were before the conflict \u201cstill feels far away,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe our grandchildren will see Gaza rebuilt,\u201d Ms. Muftah said. \u201cWhoever lives long enough will see it \u2014 the Gaza we remember.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesman for Gaza\u2019s Civil Defense emergency rescue service, said on Saturday that 63 bodies had been recovered in the streets of Gaza City since the cease-fire began. He said he believed dozens more were probably under the rubble.<\/p>\n
The director of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Dr. Mohammad Abu Salmiya, said the health care system would face \u201csevere shortages\u201d and \u201cimmense\u201d challenges as people returned to the city. \u201cWe\u2019ve finished one war and entered another,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Gaza is in a deep humanitarian crisis, with widespread hunger, vast destruction of property and most of its two million people displaced repeatedly in two years of war. The territory was impoverished before the war, and food supplies and other aid have been sharply curtailed since the conflict began, making circumstances much worse.<\/p>\n